Calling Sister Midnight
by Vain Girl
Summary: It’s raining in Yokohama and Goku’s going for a walk. Far future fic. Reincarnation fic? Maybe. Crossover with Wild Adapter, another Minekura work. Now complete.
1. Calling Sister Midnight

**So, it's raining in Yokohama and Goku's going for a walk. Far future fic. Reincarnation fic? Maybe. Crossover with another Minekura work.**

**Calling Sister Midnight**

Most of the time it's easier for Goku not to remember anything at all. He gets older, but slowly, and time drifts by like he's the one in slow motion and everyone around him is drag racing. It's easier to forget that there were ever companions and purpose and a mission. But sometimes forgetting is impossible and this is one of those days.

Today it's raining in Yokohama, raining hard enough to make anyone believe that the rainy season will last forever. That rain will blanket every day until the sun is lost in someone's memory the way Shangri-la is lost in Goku's. The rain by itself is almost enough to dig up things that are pointless to think about but Goku is tougher than some stupid weather and he has a particularly good meal in his belly so he doesn't mind the wet and filth of a Yokohama back alley.

But the fact that it's raining makes him turn around and stare back when he realizes that a dirty cheeked child with a familiar face is staring at him. There's nothing weird about the staring, this is Japan after all, and gajiin are apparently for staring at if they show up in country. Goku's used to it, anyway. For a thousand and some year old earth spirit from Shangri-La it's kind of pointless to be bothered by a staring, open mouthed child.

The thing is, though, it's still pretty weird because that's Hakkai's face staring at Goku under the layers of childish softness and brown eyes. Cho Hakkai's younger, angrier clone, at least. Goku figures the resemblance for some creepy accident. There are how many billion people in the world, so there's bound to be more of them then there are faces. Anyway it has to be an accident because Goku hasn't seen Hakkai in a good five hundred years and he never wanted to think of him wearing this child's expression. Staring like that. Making Goku think about things that are so much better just being forgotten.

Goku glares back but the kid doesn't take the hint, just keeps staring. He really is dirty enough to be homeless, but he's wearing nice, well fitting clothes under the layer of filth. He's bound to belong to someone. Someone is probably looking for the kid. Who probably ran away to go play in the mud or something stupid like that.

"Hey, you, hasn't your mother taught you it's rude to stare at strangers?" Goku says even though it seems pointless. He can picture an imaginary Sanzo perched on his shoulder telling him not to waste his time on this kind of idiocy and keep walking. But Goku doesn't like to think about Sanzo at all and he's kind of pissed that this kid had the nerve to remind him.

"No. She never told me anything like that." The kid gives a half shrug and keeps staring. Goku might have really kept walking except for that shrug. Affable and a little helpless and almost pure Hakkai. And then there are those eyes. Brown and mildly curious... but. Not. It takes Goku a moment to realize that this boy is just staring ahead blanking and there's nothing alive in those eyes but a shiny brown reflection of Goku's face. The curiosity is all Goku's own reflected back at him. It bugs the shit out of him but he can't figure out why. It's not like the boy is a demon or anything, he smells like plain, dirty, human boy left out in the rain and mud a little too long.

"Well, maybe she should have. How about we go find her and I'll suggest she fix that for you?" Goku says. "She's probably worried sick about you." The Sanzo voice in his head is thoroughly stifled or at least allows itself to be convinced the way the real Sanzo would have been. Maybe it's a bad idea taking a child home in a country where most people seem to think he's an object of mild contempt at best but there's no one else around to do the taking home.

Besides, no kid should look like this one does. It's not even that he looks hopeless, it's more like it never occurred to the boy that hope might actually exist.

The boy tilts his head in a mild sort of consideration. He doesn't look bothered by the offer at all and Goku suspects no one told him he shouldn't talk to strangers either. "I doubt it," he finally says. "She doesn't think I'm very interesting."

Goku opens his mouth to say something bland like he's sure that isn't true, but of course he knows better. He's been on his own in the world for five hundred years, long enough to know how messed up things can get. Long enough to know what children shouldn't look like.

"Are you on your own?" How old can this kid be? Ten? Twelve maybe, but not more. He can't have been on his own for long, he looks dirty and wet, but not hungry or bedraggled otherwise.

"No, I live somewhere. I'm just walking. I wanted to find someone to talk to." The kid gestures to Goku as if to say, 'and here someone is, aren't I clever?'

"So there's no one to talk to at home, huh?" Goku asks, stepping up closer to the boy. Definitely not Hakkai. No way.

He gets another mild shrug for a reply and more information he didn't want to hear. "They don't talk to me. That's okay. What are you doing here anyway?"

"What am I- walking. Jeez, it's a public street. What are you doing here?" Goku splutters, sounding like he's not much more than an easily needled kid himself, if only for a moment. He blames it on a too familiar face screwing with his concentration.

"Talking." The kid actually smiles at him, as if he's done something cute and funny, as if he's the one a thousand years old and Goku is the child. "Hey, Mister, have you got a cigarette?"

Goku turns pink and splutters again. "You're too young for that! Jeez." He shakes his head and the kid looks like he might actually laugh for a moment, something almost warm and alive in those brown eyes. But Goku's mouth still works faster than his brain sometimes. "I can't believe your parents let you smoke!"

Just like that the potential for light in the boy's eyes turns off. It's nothing gradual, more like someone had slammed on a switch or shut a door and all Goku could see in those eyes was himself again.

"Well... it's too much of a pain for them to think about, I suppose." The kid says, blandly, like he was way older than he looked. He hops off of his perch, water drops shaking out of his clothes as he moves. He was so soaked through he probably squelched, but he acts like it doesn't bother him.

"Wait!" Goku calls, though he doesn't know why. He doesn't like it at all, this boy with his friend and teacher's face. It's just wrong, it should be fixed.

The boy turns and looks at him, flashes a narrow, empty smile. "Don't worry about it, Mister. It's okay." Then he's gone around a corner, too fast and too small for Goku to follow.

The impression of those eyes doesn't go away and it's a few minutes before Goku realizes he doesn't even know the boy's name. Now he probably never will.


	2. I'm An Idiot For You

Part, the second, takes place several years after part the first. Still more premise than plot here. Takes place toward the end of volume one of Wild Adapter and long after all the action is over in Saiyuki. I don't think there are any real spoilers here.

I'm an Idiot for You

Karma has a way of fucking you up. Goku leaves Japan just in time to watch the economy continue to collapse from somewhere else. He has no intentions of going back, but he does anyway. He definitely doesn't plan to end up in Yokohama, but that's where he is.

The part of town he's in is still dirty and still looks like the wrong end of an urban renewal project from the 60's. He's hungry, but a ramen stand is easy enough to find and that takes the edge of. Lately Goku is starting to wonder if hunger is ever something that actually goes away- all the way away, but he tries not to think about that too much on grounds of pointlessness.

Goku is just finishing his ramen when he hears gunshots. He doesn't look up and neither does anyone else, which tells him that this really is a bad neighborhood and that this country has fallen some in the last years. Goku shrugs, pays and wanders outside. It isn't like there's anything a human bullet can do to him.

Goku realizes his karma must still be a mess when he turns into an alley and sees the boy with Hakkai's face, back pressed to a wall and gun slung in his hand with careless ease. It's got to be the same boy he met six years ago- the age is right, and how many of them can there be? With eyes like the dead and a tiny, empty smile hanging on like a mask of politeness over a pool of ooze.

He's grown tall, the boy, taller then Hakkai ever was. Taller than Goku, even taller than Gojyo had been. He must loom like a basketball player in a place like Japan. He doesn't move like one, though. Fast and dancer graceful and hit man deadly, and just now he's the only one left in the alley and the stink of blood and guts is starting to mix with dumpster trash. He moves like Hakkai, but unapologetically. He still looks too fucking much like Hakkai and that's what Goku, who ought to be smarter by now, but isn't, can't get over. It makes him freeze and stare at something he really should just walk on past.

Then again Goku's never been the walking on by type. Which is probably why he suddenly has the warm end of a gun pressed inches away from his forehead and considering brown eyes watching him. The boy is still smiling. How old is he again? Not even close to old enough.

"You look lost," the boy says. A black coat swirls around his hips and he's dressed in a white shirt and slacks underneath, like part of a school uniform. He looks the right age for one. Goku wonders why he hasn't fired yet, what's he waiting for. He can't mean to leave witnesses, he moves like a professional, not a random mass murderer.

"I'm not. Lost," Goku replies, staring back, as fearlessly as someone who knows a bullet won't kill him and may not care much if it could.

The boy tilts his chin and presses the gun against skin. Hot. It feels hot. Goku doesn't flinch. "Who are you? Chinese? Triads? It's only polite to warn you I'm in a bad mood today."

Goku can't help it. He laughs. Bad mood. Fuck, yeah. Definitely. There's blood painting the alley walls and a powder warm gun against his forehead. And what really, really weirds him out is that the boy who made it all happen is laughing with him. Just like that, like he sees the irony of being polite too. Hakkai would have seen it. Hakkai was always polite.

"No. I'm not with the triads," Goku says, still hiccuping on laughter. "And you? Yakuza?" He doesn't have any visible tattoos, but he doesn't have any visible skin anyway. Goku isn't the least surprised that the little boy he met here could end up like this, but he wishes he were. It just plain sucks.

The boy shrugs, but he's still smiling. Like he still gets the joke even if Goku doesn't find it funny anymore. "Hai, hai. I was with Izumokai. But not after today."

Goku backs up, just a tiny bit away from the gun, but not far enough it wouldn't shatter his skull if he were human. He looks down at the bodies. They look like typical punks. Boring. "They'd object to this?" he asks.

The boy laughs again. "Not really. I'm just tired of them. I've already beaten all their video games anyway." His eyes widen for a moment. "I remember you. Golden eyes, right? Wow... it has been a long time."

For just a second Goku is sure that the boy is talking about before, way before. Because he looks like Hakkai, shit, he even sounds like Hakkai and if he could be Hakkai that would mean that he was here. Hakkai was here and the others might be here... might be- Sanzo. Goku's stomach sags when he realizes that the kid is only talking about the last time in Yokohama and for a moment he feels too disappointed to be hungry.

"Yeah," he says. "So, you grew up to be the violent type, huh?"

"Mhmm. Sure." There's still a gun pointed right at Goku and he wonders if he can actually talk to this boy like this and still get shot afterwards. Probably. Except then, just like that the gun is lowered and the boy is sliding it away. There's just a flash of lean, smooth skin and it's gone under swirls of coat.

"I'll trust you not to run to the cops," the boy says, still all smiles. Goku wonders if Hakkai used to be this full of rage under his smiles too and he was just too oblivious to notice. "Though I suppose you can go if you want. They're all dirty anyway and if I get the one good one I probably deserve to get caught."

Goku blinks and his fingers fist in his coat pocket. For some reason he just wants to hit the kid for being so- so not Hakkai. For possibly being more like Hakkai then Goku needed to think about, like, ever. He has to stop thinking of this boy as Hakkai. Not Hakkai.

"Are you still looking for someone to talk to?" he asks suddenly. That was what the boy had been looking for last time, right?

"Still? Oh. No. Not really. There was a person, but well-" The boy gestured peremptorily at the bodies and Goku wondered if these guys had killed that person or the boy had himself. "Actually, I'm not very good at talking to people. It's not so interesting. Sorry."

He smiles and bows as if he really were sorry. Except there are sprays of blood over his bright white shirt and he doesn't look sorry at all. Goku wonders why the kid is even talking to him, he looks so indifferent. He really, really has to stop seeing Hakkai here.

"You have a name?" Goku asks suddenly. If he has a name for the boy he can just think of him as that.

"Yeah," the boy replies shortly, and for just a moment he looks impish, amused. Yeah, no kidding he has a name. Then he seems to come to some decision. He bows slightly. "Kubota. I feel like I should know yours for some reason. You want to tell me why that is?"

Goku blinks, and his gut twists all over again. He barely even catches the name. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Kubota can't recognize his name because if he does, if he does- no. Goku doesn't want to think about the implications. He opens his mouth, then shuts it. Shakes his head and turns on his heels.

This time he's the one running, far and fast as he can, even if he'll be kicking himself for it tomorrow. Kubota doesn't follow him, but then Goku never expected him to.


	3. You've Got Me Reaching for the Moon

Part the third, follows immediately after part two. More wandering, more swearing. Some dead bodies, but they are the same dead bodies featured in part two. Some minor spoilers for the end of Wild Adapter volume one.

I've actually only read through volume three and snippets of four, so this would be inevitably AU from whatever Minekura is doing now.

You've Got Me Reaching for the Moon

When he's done running and hiding from a fucking high school kid- a high school kid! Goku wants to leave Japan. The Sanzo that's sitting on his shoulder dressed like an imaginary red devil is telling him do it, to go, before he gets any deeper into this mess. It's not like Kubota needs him for anything, it's not like he'll do any good here. He's just staring wide eyed at the train wreck of Hakkai's karma like any other sick hanger-oner at an accident. And Goku even only gets that much credit if he makes the assumption that this Japanese kid actually is Hakkai. Which he seems to be doing against his better judgement. Why can't someone have just issued Goku some hidden psychic powers that let him know these things for sure?

'What judgement?' The Sanzo devil yells at him, brandishing a red paper fan. Goku ignores it. He's too old to worry about hallucinating at this point.

Instead of leaving, he turns around and goes back, but Kubota is already gone and there's nothing in the alley but soon to be rotting meat. The bodies themselves hardly bother Goku, but the idea of them disturbs him. All in all it looks like being on the wrong end of Cho Hakkai's karma has to be a nasty place to be. On the other hand being on the right end could well be that much worse.

Goku glares at some punk's forehead. There's a perfect bullet hole right through the middle, small and neat, like a kami's chakra. Kubota's almost as good a shot as Sanzo, judging by the one corpse, but none of the rest of them are neat. The damage is almost as brutal and deliberate as if a demon had done it and Goku tries not to think about how in the hell it was accomplished or to remember how gore splattered the kid had been. What the hell had these bastards done to him anyway?

He turns around and leaves before the cops have a chance to arrive. There was definitely no point in being a gajin with no paper trail at the site of this kind of carnage. It couldn't possibly do him any good.

The next time Goku sees Kubota is a day later and he isn't surprised any more. Of course he's going to see him again, whatever's happening can't possibly be over yet. Kubota looks different, dressed neatly and stiffly, as if coming from a funeral and it makes Goku wonder again about the person Kubota mentioned having but not having anymore. Goku is so busy wondering he doesn't get the chance to turn and run before Kubota has already seen him and given a little wave of greeting that creeps him the hell out for no reason he can remember.

He waves back anyway. Maybe there ought to be lunch now. Goku gets the idea this entire mess would seem less disturbing if there were lunch involved in it somewhere. He wonders if Kubota can cook like Hakkai used to, but he doesn't seem the type. He knows he won't ask.

He doesn't have time to think along these lines for long because the next thing, Kubota is about a meter away, smiling at him.

"Hello, Stranger-in-Alley-san. You got a light?" He gestures to the cigarette hanging between his lips.

"I don't smoke. It's gross and it makes you stink," Goku spits out before he can think about why he's even saying that. It's more like the sort of thing he'd have said to Gojyo, but without really meaning it.

Kubota just shrugs, smiles and says, "Hai, hai." Then he pulls a lighter out of his coat pocket, which makes Goku wonder what the fuck he was asking for one for. Terminal laziness or something?

"So. Are you following me for any reason? It's starting to make me curious." Kubota takes a long drag of his cigarette and keeps smiling, but for some reason Goku flashes on dead meat stacked in an alley. He wonders if Kubota would actually kill someone who makes him really curious.

"Um? No. I don't want to tell you?" Goku says, because this has the advantage of being true and the second advantage of seeing if this person will actually do anything to him. This is important because Hakkai, if it were Hakkai, would never hurt him.

Kubota blinks, as if Goku has said something remarkable and peers down at him from the land of the ridiculously tall and mildly myopic. He adjusts his glasses. It takes Goku a moment to realize why his throat feels too dry and this reaction is generally freaking him out. It's because Kubota actually looks genuinely interested in him and his interested expression is exactly like... yeah.

"All right. But you can tell me your name? Seeing as how I told you mine and it would be only fair."

Goku really can't help it. He smiles at the kid, brightly and genuinely. Just at this moment it doesn't feel like he's sharing space with some badly decayed copy of a friend and teacher. Okay, there are the bodies, but then there were always bodies with his friends. And okay, it's probably just a momentary pause between Kubota acting like a cross between a corpse and a killer and it still gives Goku the shudders, but there's nothing wrong with moments. Sometimes moments are all you get.

"I'm Goku," he says, and offers his hand. "Pleased to meet you." Because for the moment he really, really is pleased.

Kubota takes it and smiles back in a way that makes Goku wonder if he actually feels pleasure or he only reflects it back onto other people. He'd probably figure it out if he stuck around long enough, but he really, really doesn't want to. And Kubota doesn't act like Goku's name means anything to him at all. Not one damn thing. Goku tries not to let that get to him, because people aren't supposed to remember much of their past lives, are they? It would get weird and cluttered if they did and the world has enough weird and cluttered to last them.

Yeah, if there was a Sanzo out there he wouldn't remember a thing. And that was supposed to be a good thing.

Goku isn't quite sure how it happened, but they're walking together, and for whatever reason it isn't hard to keep up with Kubota's long, loping strides. Kubota is talking, but not about whatever it is you'd think high school aged yakuza hit men would talk about.

"When I saw the new billboards out for it I thought I really had to try it. It must be good if they pulled out the neon for it," Kubota is saying. Goku blinks and tries to remember what in hell they might possibly be talking about and why there might be neon billboards involved in it. "After all, it is the super improved rainbow-lychee-grape flavored."

Goku blinks again and decides not to worry about it too much. It's just Japan. At least it makes more sense when they turn a corner and Goku is following Kubota into a tiny corner convenience store toward a brightly colored display of rainbow-lychee-grape flavored something. Kubota offers him a piece but he says no. It is food, but- well, it doesn't actually smell like food to him.

"Well, suit yourself," Kubota says and pops it into his mouth before lighting another cigarette. Goku wonders how the fuck he can taste anything if he's always going to be smoking like that.

Wondering about taste and cigarettes is a good thing to wonder about because that means Goku isn't thinking about how messed up it is to be walking around Yokohama, a city he hates, with the echo of a ghost of someone he loved. Talking about freakish Japanese food because there's actually nothing else to talk about.

Goku wants to talk about something else. Like memories and bodies and if Kubota knows any angry men who look like the sun. He seems to be missing the guts to do that, though, because all he can think is, what if Kubota says yes? And what if he meets a person like that and they're also like this? Like Kubota is like Hakkai, but not at all and not remembering anything.

It's easier to talk about food. Goku likes talking to Hakkai about food and Hakkai always listens and interjects at the appropriate points. Goku almost doesn't realize when they turn a corner and Kubota isn't interjecting anymore, or even walking at all anymore.

It's actually the smell that alerts him first, not Kubota. Something- no someone is lying by the dumpster. Not dead, just unconscious. He smells alive, though it's impossible to tell if he's breathing under a fall of black hair that's covering half his face. Alive, but very, very weird in a way that Goku can't put into words.

Goku takes a step toward the body, but he doesn't get far at all because Kubota is ahead of him pushing him out of the way. And Goku sees his face. Kubota's face, like he's seeing something he doesn't understand and it might just possibly scare the shit out of him. The same expression Goku was probably wearing when he first spotted Kubota.

And he sees the unconscious guy's face too, and the coloring is all wrong, because it should be red and red, and Goku doesn't like the way he's curled up all fetal and half dead looking and for some reason Goku gets the idea that it should be raining. It should be raining and he, Goku, shouldn't be here, because this is Hakkai's karma. Gojyo's karma. Not his.

And then Kubota turns back to look at him, just for a moment, stopped in a half kneeling pose beside the body. Dark eyes fixed on Goku's and they're still shiny and empty, still reflecting Goku like a mirror instead of showing anything of Kubota.

A mirror, right. But for some reason his expression right now makes Goku think of cracked mirrors. Cracking mirrors. Which, apparently, somewhere, mean seven years of bad luck. Meeting dead but not dead people in alleys should really be bad luck all on its own, even if it isn't quite how that saying goes.

"Do you know him?" Kubota asks, gesturing toward the prone boy. Goku isn't even sure how to answer that. He definitely knows the face, even the shape of his eyes, though he's willing to bet that they won't be the right color when they open.

"About as well as I know you," he mutters and this is apparently a good answer because Kubota looks away. Kubota finishes the act of kneeling down next to the boy and presses long fingertips against a pulse point.

"He looks like a stray cat," Kubota says, almost a whisper and Goku knows without being told that Kubota isn't really talking to him. "How unusual." Goku follows the slow, deliberate stroking arc of Kubota's hand to the other boys and stares. The fingers Kubota is pressing his own against don't look anything like human at all. More like a clawed, animal hand, and Goku knows without having to be told that something truly, deeply fucked is happening in front of him and he doesn't have near enough information to know what.

Unusual. A stray cat.

"Well, he shouldn't be left here. This could be important." Kubota is still talking and still not really talking to Goku. It's like he's suddenly forgotten there's anyone in the alley but himself and the unconscious stray cat he's heaving over his shoulders.

And then Goku is staring at a pair of brown eyes, way too close and bright even under glasses and he knows that of course Kubota didn't forget. "I'll have to trust you not to mention this to anyone again. I can, can't I?"

"Yeah," Goku says softly. "Yeah, you can. There's no one for me to tell anyway."

Goku hates karma so much. Hates watching Kubota half stumble out of an alley with the weight of his own karma, his stray cat and a cracking mirror on him all at once. Hates the fact that it isn't him, that he, Goku, has no weight, no nothing but memories and bad reflections of his dead.

Most of all Goku hates that he knows he can't even run away from Yokohama again. He's too caught up in this and, yeah, there are six billion people in the world, or something close to it, but if one of them is Sanzo, Goku is sure that he'll be here.


	4. What Can I Do About My Dreams?

And this is a recap of the parts you didn't see of 1-3, from Kubota's pov. So far Kubota isn't speaking to me so I had him speak to someone else who he was much more liable to speak to. Hooray!

Also, thanks for all the reviews! I'm never sure how respond to reviews on so that people receive said responses is supposed to work, but I seriously adore them all, so here goes me trying.

Arin Ross- Still no bloody plot, but I've come up with more fic anyway. Funny how that goes.

Sparklehunter - Yes, of course you should write your own fic, I'd love to read it! Ideas don't get copywrite and anyway, a crossover is such a general idea.

Permataform - Thank you so much! I've been waiting for someone to write a crossover too, damnit, and no one did so I had to! And yes, I am on livejournal and so is this story. I'm Ninhursag but my fanfic journal is vaingirlfic.

What Can I Do About My Dreams?

It's not as though any of it were real while it was happening. It's not important, it's just this person that used to be around. Twelve years old, with a dead cat, mauled by something too much bigger and already gone stiff and soulless, clutched in his arms. It was cold where it used to be warm and soft when it pressed it's face against someone's fingertips. Mostly it was just this stray cat, but you could really get used to the warm sounds of him purring.

Really. He was only my cat in the sense that he knew it was me coming with his food. Animals are like that about food, but people are the worst. So, who knows why someone would take a cat like that home with some strange idea of burying it, but that's what happened.

It was a really big house, where I lived then. Even in Yokohama, in a place so crowded they'd run out of burial space, it was a big house. It echoed, even with the staff running it. It was easy to find all the good places to hide and the narrow spaces where no one would see you if they were to look. If you hid long enough you might actually become invisible. No... really, if you'd been there you would know what I mean.

The gentleman of the house was- do you know, I remember more about the cat than that person? I suppose the cat and I conversed more often. But I do know he was very tall and had a smooth, inviting speaking voice, as if he might say something very interesting at any moment.

He sounded like velvet when he complained to the maid about the stench of cat guts and wondered out loud what kind of imbecile would bring something like that into the house.

"Toss that filth out and get it out of sight. There are important dinner guests coming!" Or something like that. I can't do my father's voice very well, you're much better at that sort of thing.

Anyway, the cat went into the trash and I was hustled upstairs to the bath and to my room. Out of sight of dinner guests, naturally. It wasn't bad, it was just how it was, but I think I'd really wanted to bury the cat. But that time, I couldn't do it.

Instead I climbed out the window, down the brick, and almost twisted my ankle coming down. I had a pack of cigarettes that I had taken from that person's desk while he was somewhere else, tucked into my coat pocket, but no light. It was raining. I was still wearing a sweater with the cat's blood on it, though I didn't remember putting it back on after the bath.

No light, no money, and rain, so of course a person of twelve is bound to get muddy and hungry. I was just walking, mostly, not thinking about anything much but getting a light or food. I'm not sure how I came to be in an alley behind a restaurant, but that's where I met a person with round golden eyes, just like a cat's. He was old, or at least he looked old to me then, but I couldn't help staring at his eyes. Just staring, like I should know something about him from somewhere. I don't know why. Sometimes, in a big house like the one where I lived then, you could forget you weren't actually invisible.

I wasn't invisible to him, though I can't remember what he said. Nothing important, something about my parents, something about cigarettes. Even though he was old and human he seemed like he might be interesting, but really, I don't think he said much at all.

But when I turned around to go back to that house I found that I couldn't go. It was a strange thing, like it was happening to someone else. Walking and walking, but walking past. Maybe it did happen to someone else.

After that I went to live with my mother's brother, Kasai. You'll like him, I think. He's one of our country's wonderfully corrupt police officers.

The next time I met the person with the golden eyes I'd gotten my clothes covered in blood again, finishing up my last assignment for the Izumokai. It's kind of interesting how that works out. I didn't recognize him at first, perhaps because he seemed much younger to me than he had the last time. Like a child, wide eyed and fearless, more animal than human.

He looked at me like he knew who I was and it seemed strange that he remembered me from all those years ago. Then again I remembered him too. This was the second time I'd seen those golden eyes after something died.

Not a cat the second time, just someone- just my kohai. That time it was raining too, water running down my face, pooling red around that striped suit he wore. I hadn't imagined I could be moved by such a thing. It felt very odd and the gun in my hand was quite warm and comfortable in the way that only guns can be.

He said it was probably Toujou that had done it before he died. That made sense, they'd always been Izumokai's rivals in the drug trade and that person, my kohai, was very invested in Izumokai. So I took my comfortable gun and did this one last thing for that person, because before, when they'd shot him down, I hadn't been there to do anything. That other time, my comfortable gun and I hadn't been able to do so much at all.

And now, there I was, staring into golden eyes, but it all looked like blood to me. The golden eyed man was a very comfortable sort of person, despite all the blood and I almost wanted to talk to him, but I couldn't have said about what. Bean jam and meat buns, maybe?

Nothing important. After that I went to watch them bury my kohai and it was very strange indeed.

The next day I learned that golden eyed stranger's name. Goku. And I found something entirely new, completely different from anything I'd ever seen before.

It's a funny thing, actually. In my entire life, nothing ever felt real, like it was happening to someone else, someone invisible. And then I took you home that day.

"Mmm... Kubo-chan?" Tokitoh shifts and yawns, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. The air stinks of cigarettes, which means Kubota is hovering nearby. Right in his face in fact when Tokitoh gets his eyes all the way open. Blowing smoke at him and staring contemplatively. Tokitoh wrinkles his nose, but doesn't say anything and lets Kubota's fingers slide through his.

He feels weird, like Kubota has been telling him something important, but he can't remember that. Tokitoh hates that, there's already enough shit he can't remember, starting with his entire life before waking up in this apartment, on this bed. He doesn't need to add to it.

Kubota smiles at him and that's a weird kind of smile too, like he's not quite there, which Tokitoh really, really hates, because, fuck, the least a guy could do was pay attention when you talked to him. But when Kubota talks he sounds fine. "Ah, are you finally awake now? I thought you wanted to get dinner out."

Tokitoh nods, hard. "Fuck, yes. Anything's better than the shit that comes out of your kitchen you seem to think is food. Hey- what were you babbling about, anyway? I could almost hear you in my sleep."

"Nothing, Tokitoh. You were probably dreaming," Kubota says and smiles his way fucking superior, I know shit, but I'm not going to tell you because you're such a cute amnesiac fumbling in the dark smile. Like fuck he was dreaming! He'd know if he were and he wasn't.

"Was not! Well. Whatever." And then Kubota's smile is gone, replaced by something Tokitoh couldn't name but he can always recognize. Bad things, time to completely change the subject things. "Hey, so let's go, I want actual food, damn it. Not whatever you're trying to poison me with today."

And Tokitoh hops to his feet, glad he slept in his clothes so he doesn't have to mess around changing, and tugs Kubota by the hand. Funny, he didn't think he'd let go once since he first let Kubota grab his hand. Now his fingers are getting numb, but whatever. It's no big deal.

See, the thing is, everything from before, it was all just happening to some person who used to be around. It isn't real. Nothing is ever real until you open your eyes and say my name. So, you'd better live a long time, Tokitoh, because the next time someone has to see that person with golden eyes and be covered with blood, it had better be you and not me.

Really. I insist.


	5. Not My Academy

Part five and look, there's a plot! I knew there was one in here somewhere.

Not My Academy

Shelly hates Japan. She hates the way it never feels quite comfortable or like home and she hates the way her fair hair and pale skin mean she's going to be stared at. That she's going to be the tall, big breasted blonde here whether she likes it or not. At least at home she's too athletic too qualify for the big breasted and she doesn't quite make tall at 5'8''. Here the guys stare and they don't even feel bad about it if she glares and calls them perverts.

The one thing Shelly hates more than Japan is the idea of going home, so here she is, teaching English pronunciation to junior high kids who get the fuck on her nerves and try to grope her when she's not looking. And maybe here is actually far enough, because it was either the other end of the world or a nunnery and Shelly's an atheist.

Tonight she could be at home with the paper, lousy convenience store coffee and her cigarettes, but she's not and that's made her mood that much worse. Instead she's in the corner of some bar with a bunch of whiny ex-pats, smelling the stink of the wrong brand of cigarettes. Sissy ass things, like cloves, mostly. Most of these people have fuck and all to say for themselves, think they're on some great adventure or something pathetic. Yeah, real great adventure when at the end of the day they're all here socializing with each other, talking about the same worthless shit they could have been babbling about in some café in New York.

Some days it's enough to make her wish she had a machine gun and an excuse. Any excuse would do. Shelly's actually got an excuse right now in the form of some chick with the most affected sounding high pitched whine she's ever heard who seems to think Shelly is her new bestest friend. Anna or something and Shelly has no idea what Anna does but suspects she's some kind of hostess. Too damn much money from no where to be anything else.

"So, this guy comes around to see me all the time," Anna something is blathering, as if Shelly's killing glare is some kind of encouragement. "So nice! He's got this wicked cool dragon tattoo on his arm, and man, he keeps bringing me things, take a look!" Anna dangles her wrist a centimeter from Shelly's face and Shelly barely resists the urge to take a bite of flesh.

"Isn't it gorgeous? It's 24 carat gold! So soft!" Anna says.

"Yeah, great. How many times did you have to fuck him to get that?" Shelly growls. The guy who dragged her here, Ian Something the Canadian, blushes and looks away but Anna just giggles mindless. Fuck.

"Oh, I didn't! He just likes to talk to me, you know. You should come around my club sometime and meet the owner too, Shelly. A girl like you would do great," Anna says, dangling the bracelet again and giving a meaningful look to Shelly's threadbare jeans and faded white button down shirt, as if to suggest how great Shelly isn't doing now. Shelly growls again.

"Do I look like an idiot to you? If he's giving someone like you something like that and he's tattooed he's with the local mob. Fuck off." Shelly might have come to Japan without much planning, but she's not stupid and she actually reads and talks to people. She's damned well researched what mob or yakuza or whatever the fuck they call it here is supposed to look like when she realized she was going to have to be dealing with people like Anna.

"He is not! Well..." Anna grins and leans forward, like they're co-conspirators instead of an idiot and her innocent victim. "He did tell me he could hook me up, if I was into it. You know, a little-" She presses her pinkie to her nose and sniffs as if demonstrating her technique. Shelly resists the urge to whale her, but it's hard.

"And you're telling me this why?" Shelly manages through gritted teeth. A gun. She needs a gun. All she'd need to do was fire a warning shot.

"Cause, I heard about you. You like to party, right?" Anna pats her shoulder lightly and finishes her drink. It's got to be her fifth vodka tonic and probably explains a lot about how she's acting right now. Not that it's an excuse. "Tommy Martin says he knows you from NYU and you were wild there."

"Tommy who the fuck now?" Shelly repeats blankly, wondering if she's gone pale as she feels. Fuck. It's probably too dark to tell. Who is this Tommy guy?

"Tommy Martin. I met him working. He's on retainer for some company here and he says he knew you from NYU. Come on, Shelly. Come to the club. Eiji, the guy I'm telling you about, he gets us stuff you never even hear about in the States."

"Tommy... Martin. What the fuck are you doing talking about me to some guy named- I don't even know who you mean." Shelly's gone from white to pink.

Anna keeps drinking. "Seriously. Shit you have never heard of. Like, Eiji says he can score us this thing called WA. It makes you an animal. Seriously." Anna's got the most high pitched giggle in creation and being blisteringly drunk hasn't effected the plate like perfection of her make-up. She clearly will never shut up.

Shelly feels completely and utterly justified for grabbing her mostly full plate of something that had been described on the menu as fried eels and dumping it on Anna's head, with enough force to break the plate. This works. Anna squeals, jumps up, and runs for the ladies, still squealing. Something about blood.

Shelly dusts off her hands, drops her share of the tab on the table and leaves without saying goodbye. She's had enough of that NYU shit to never need to hear it again for the rest of existence. Too damn bad coming around the world hadn't gotten people to shut up about that.

She doesn't pay any attention to the uproar and the screaming because it doesn't even occur to her to do that until she realizes that it's not getting further away as she walks toward the door. Shelly turns around, back on her heels, every bit of nervous energy in her body making her buzz like she is high again. Just adrenaline.

Just in time. Something is coming at her. Some thing.

It's large and bulging and covered in some kind of fluid, fur, and the remains of Anna the hostess' slinky little dress. It's screaming like the world's on fire, screams mingling in with the sounds of other people running the fuck away. That's all Shelly has time to see before it's on her, long claws forward like a real hell bitch instead of whatever she'd assumed Anna was before.

Shelly kicks at its ribs, mostly on mosh pit crazy bashing trained instincts and she knows damn well that steel toed boots hurt like the end of the world, but the thing doesn't seem to feel it. Shelly can't say as much for herself and she screams when claws impact on her shoulder. It feels like a nightmare, like the kind she used to have when she was three and knew for sure there were demons in the closet and they wanted to eat her. It's got to be a nightmare or a drug flashback from what she took trying to make the nightmares stop when they didn't go away even though she was more than old enough to knew the damn closet was empty.

It was a nightmare because this kind of thing doesn't happen and it's dripping some kind of goop on her one good shirt and now she's bleeding and Shelly knows she can't afford a new one. Shelly howls in some combination of outrage and agony and kicks it again, harder because there is no way she's losing to a nightmare. No way. No way.

"Die, you fucker!" Shelly screams but it's coming at her fast and hard enough that she suspects that she's the one who might die here. Half way across the wrong end of the world, here in this country she hates. Here, an unofficial runaway from life. And she's going to die. She jumps back, barely managing to escape a swipe of the claws across her neck.

"No you fucking don't! Fucking whore, you aren't killing me!" And she doesn't know how but she has her hands on a chair, a metal one and she bashes the thing with it. It's still coming and this is like a horror movie, and why, why didn't she give into the temptation and just get a damned gun?

She must have closed her eyes for a moment, though she doesn't remember doing it. Fuck knows Shelly doesn't remember doing much. But she must have done that, because somehow there's even more of the monster goop splattering everywhere. Goop and something that feels and smells far too much like someone's insides and Shelly wants to scream and scream and never stop but she won't because there's some guy standing in front of her staring, his hands wrapped around the monster's neck, like he's just broken it in half. There's no world or nightmare bad enough for Shelly to get caught screaming in front of a guy.

"Sanzo?" the guy whispers, or something that sounds like that. Shelly stares and shakes her head, wondering if the thing hit her on the head and she's more confused than she thinks. The guy has golden eyes. Contacts. Right. He drops the body like its meat. Which it is, meat that seems to have exploded all over the bar. Words are buzzing in her ears, but Shelly thinks he says something like, "Sanzo? Anata wa iru?"

"What?" Shelly asks, more stridently than she'd meant to. "What did you say?" She could have sworn she spoke at least some Japanese two seconds ago, but there isn't a fraction of a word left in her head right now. And she has dead monster Anna goop all over a shirt she can't afford to replace.

The guy blinks and walks up to her, staring like she's the Mona Lisa and the Holy Grail in one package. Shelly back away, step by step and wonders why she isn't running. Probably because she refuses to back down for anyone.

"You speak English then?" he says softly, with only the hint of an accent. Shelly almost shakes her head before her brain unscrambles enough to make sense of that.

"Yeah," she mutters. She can do this. "I- yeah. I do. You do too, so that's a good start."

He nods, still staring. She thinks it's her hair he's staring at which is weird. With those eyes and how good his English is there's no way he's never seen a blonde woman before. "Yes. It is. A good start. I'm Goku. I- you look like the sun. I. Your name? Can you tell me?"

Shelly's starting to get over the shock just enough to wonder if this guy is trying to pick her up at the scene of a dead body but she feels too weird to think about it hard. Like there's something important she's forgotten that goes with demons in closets and golden eyes. She presses her hand to her shoulder and it comes away sticky and warm. Fuck, still bleeding. She sways on her feet.

"I'm Shelly," she whispers, and plops down onto a suddenly convenient chair, wondering how the hell the guy managed to get the chair behind her like that. "I can't say it's nice to meet you because it's not. And don't even start some ridiculous sun bullshit with me or I'll kick your ass from here to Manhattan." She shivers and reaches into her pocket for a reasonably unsplattered cigarette and lights it with hands that hardly shake at all.

"Okay. I won't." Goku smiles at her like she's just offered him a winning lottery ticket and hands her a beer that she doesn't ask where he got. Then he sits next to her in the middle of the most godforsaken mess Shelly has ever imagined just as if everything were suddenly okay. What does she know anyway? Maybe everything is.


	6. You're Such a Perfect Fit

In which things become more complicated and actions have consequences.

Still It Must Be Nice (You're Such a Perfect Fit)

Goku doesn't know what to feel. It's like someone's plugged him into a light socket and he knows, he just knows. He's here. She's here. It doesn't matter, because she's here next to him. Sanzo, Shelly, whatever she wants to call herself, gulping beer and cigarette smoke like the world might end if she stops. And it isn't weird and wrong like meeting Kubota and it isn't too sad to be able to take like watching Kubota find the boy who was and wasn't Gojyo. It's just okay, like the first time he saw Sanzo in front of a mouth of a cave so long ago.

It's just coming home.

He doesn't even understand how he found her other than karma. Other than the fact that when everyone was running out of a bar screaming about monsters like the world was ending there was one person still in the bar screaming at the monster. And there's no way Goku couldn't take a look and see that person. He's been looking forever, it feels like. His whole life, maybe. Looking and wanting and then there she was, trying to beat off the weirdest smelling thing Goku can think of with a bar stool.

And here she is, sitting next to him in the wreckage and it's like no time has passed at all.

He's smiling like an idiot and making Shelly wrinkle her nose and look disgusted, but he doesn't care. "Jesus," she says. "You'd think you were happy about the dead thing. What the fuck is up with the dead thing? Jesus." She rubs at her cheek as if that was going to get it all off.

Goku shrugs and just looks up into her face, still smiling. "I don't really know, but it was fun, huh?" he says. Sanzo would have smacked him and called him an idiot.

"You're an idiot," Shelly says shortly and raises her eyes heavenward, as if complaining to the unseen, but she stops shaking and rubbing her skin, even if it's only long enough to roll her eyes and light another cigarette. "A psychotic whore turned into a creature from beyond and tried to kill me and you're hitting on me."

Goku's smile fades into a plain, open mouthed stare. "I'm what?" Hitting on him? Her? Sanzo? What? That was the weirdest idea he'd ever heard. The weirdness was probably why it had never even occurred to him before.

"You told me I looked like the sun, dimwit," Shelly says slowly and shakes her head, as if to dismiss an irrelevant idiocy. Goku wonders if she has a fan, but she wouldn't. He wonders what Americans have instead of fans. "Fuck. Do you think the cops will be here soon? What are we supposed to tell them, anyway?"

"Cops," Goku repeats, shaken out of thoughts of fans and Sanzo and hell why he didn't even think of that too? Of course there will be police, with the very visible dead thing and all that. And he's still a gajin with no paper trail. This is just going to suck.

"Yeah, cops. They have them here, you know, for all the good they did us just now." Shelly emphasizes the gesture with her cigarette.

"I can't talk to police," Goku admits softly. They'd ask his name and such, and then he couldn't stay here and here was where Shelly was. Not good.

Shelly glares. Her eyes are intensely blue instead of purple, but the shape is just the same. She's beautiful, her hands drawing a wide, stabbing arc with a cigarette. Goku barely notices he's staring again. "Well then. And why, precisely, would that be?" she demands in stiff, properly enunciated words.

"I-" he begins and closes his mouth before actually telling her everything. He probably will anyway, even though it's stupid and the Sanzo in his head is calling him names. He's not going to lie to her. It's just that there isn't any time right now, with the police. "I'll tell you later, okay? Where are you staying?"

Shelly shrugs, writes down an address on a bar napkin and hands it to him. Then she stares at the paper, his hand and then back to hers as if she doesn't understand something that just happened here. Goku almost asks her about it but he doesn't have to. "Why the hell did I just give you that? If you start stalking me now they will never find your corpse. Do you understand? Never."

"Okay, Shelly, I understand," he says and smiles at her. Her hair is so pretty, even splattered with blood. He thinks if she had a gun he'd probably have a hole in him somewhere by now and that makes him stupidly happy.

"Fuck you, asshole. Stop hitting on me," she hisses, but he can hear the sirens coming so he has to run for it. Goku leaves her sitting on a bar stool in the carnage and he can swear she almost smiled back at him when he waved.

He watches the police come in from the roof of the nearest building, just in case. He can almost hear Shelly's voice from where he's hiding, bright and sharp and angry amidst the sing-song Japanese and he knows he won't be able to stop grinning. Goku can almost imagine what the rest of them would say if they saw him now, how Hakkai would smile in that knowing way and Gojyo would tease him until Goku got mad enough to scream. Sanzo would roll his eyes and call him a fucking idiot.

But then they aren't exactly here, any of them. Kubota would raise an eyebrow and shrug and Goku has no idea about the wounded boy Kubota had picked up in the alley a few months ago, doesn't even know his name. Shelly would... he'd find out. Soon, tonight. He'll bring her dinner and cigarettes and sunflowers, because they'll look nice against the backdrop of her hair and find out exactly what she'll say. Maybe she'll smile at him.

Goku is so distracted imagining what it might be like he almost misses the sight of one very tall Japanese boy with glasses and a permanently attached cigarette striding into the bar right through the police lines, followed far too closely by a shorter boy with hunched shoulders, one glove and an expression caught between annoyance and curiosity. And that's when Goku remembers where he smelled something exactly like that thing today before. A few months ago in a Yokohama alley on an unconscious boy with a clawed, animal hand.

Goku's hands tighten on the cement underneath them and he stares straight ahead, wondering what, if anything he can or should do now. Karma again, so there's probably nothing he can do about any of it. It seems like hours later when he hears the sounds of broken Japanese cobbled together with some kind of Engrish as Shelly strides out of the bar flanked by Kubota and his friend and followed by a police officer yelling something about having more questions for her later.


	7. Cool and Warm

Part 7, in which there is Tokitoh and he is not happy.

Cool and Warm

This is the life of Tokitoh Minoru. It's early or possibly late and there's pale sickly colored street light pooling on the bed next to his stomach. It's warm under the blankets, he's clean and fed and the air always smells faintly of tobacco. It gets everywhere, into his clothes, under his nails, down deep into his nostrils. Funny, because Tokitoh doesn't remember smoking a day in his life.

Of course Tokitoh doesn't remember much before waking up in Kubota's bed, exhausted and wounded. Actually nothing, just shadows of nightmares and that there's definitely something out there to be sick afraid of. So sick that in those first days he has to run or lock himself in the bathroom and vomit in purple and green, but fuck, maybe that was just Kubo-chan's curry.

Mostly he just remembers to be pissed off. Pissed off at whatever nameless nothing it was that still makes him so afraid he throws up after nightmares and even more pissed off at himself for taking the easy way out and forgetting about it. Pissed enough to scream at his own mind for fucking him over in this pathetic way and taking everything from him, every fucking thing, his entire life, just to hide some stupid trauma he's sure he could just get over already if he knew about it.

Too bad you can't beat the shit out of your own mind to make it give something back. Instead Tokitoh has to find his own things, and the weird part, the really weird part, was from the first time he opened his eyes to find a mild, curious face looking down on him, there was someone to help him do that. And that was Kubo-chan.

Kubo-chan. The nickname was a joke at first, a goad along with a fist to the face, to see what Kubota would say, to see if he was finally going to do something, but Kubota just smiled and didn't say anything at all. And Tokitoh, even remembering nothing, knew that was weird, but if Kubo-chan wasn't going to be bugged by it he wouldn't be either. So it was okay and he sat on Kubo-chan's couch and watched people act like confused idiots on television and played Kubo-chan's video games like someone who had never played a game before in his life.

Of course, most times Kubota tries to touch him when he's awake, Tokitoh tries to wring his neck for him, but that's just instinct and everyone has problems. It's different when the lights are out in they're in bed because then there's always something else, something that Tokitoh doesn't remember, but he recognizes. Like fireworks in the summer or how to string words into sentences. That's what it's like in the dark, surrounded by curls of smoke and Kubota's hands.

Just lately it's been getting easier in the daylight anyway, like Kubo-chan's smoke has slid all the way inside his lungs and now Tokitoh's waking mind recognizes him too. And maybe it's the same for Kubo-chan because he doesn't touch anybody else. Not ever. Not the clerks at the 7-11 or people on the subway or the girls who hit on him sometimes, despite the fact he's too fucking tall and lazy and smiles like he doesn't mean it. Maybe it's the same thing or maybe it just looks the same from the outside but there are certain questions even Tokitoh doesn't ask.

Every question is less important than the first one anyway. The real question of, 'who the fuck am I?' Right now the only answer he has is that he is Tokitoh Minoru and he belongs to no one. And Tokitoh Minoru is a person who lives in this apartment which always stinks of cigarettes, where the walls are stained by them. This apartment which is Kubota's. Which is Kubo-chan's and therefore, is more or less his.

And Tokitoh Minoru has a hand attached to his wrist that is not his. A hand with fur and claws that's stronger than it should be but hooked up wrong. Tokitoh's hand hurts. Not sometimes, on bad days. All the time, in the back of his mind, every time he breathes in and every time he touches something. But sometimes so sharp and harsh he huddles in the shower and lets the water run down his face so he knows he isn't crying.

And he wants more than anything in the world to know what the fuck. Just that. What the fuck. He wants to know what made the person who used to be Tokitoh Minoru with all his memories intact do something so stupid, so stupid and so pathetic that it landed him like this. And then that fucking cowardly wanker asshole had the gall to forget about it.

Tokitoh is so busy thinking about it and being mad and not being able to sleep that he almost doesn't notice the movement next to him in the bed and that the darkness under the blankets has a shape.

A shape and a voice, like velvet and smoke in the morning, and an arm that slides over his stomach and strokes up and down like petting a cat. "Awake so early?" the voice murmurs, sounding only a little bit like you'd expect someone who's just woken up to sound.

"Yeah," Tokitoh mutters and leans into the hand. Definitely cigarette smoke under his skin because it just doesn't bother him at all anymore. It just feels normal. But then again, it's still mostly dark. "Not everyone is as fucking lazy as you and sleeps all the time, you know."

Normal and nice hands that soothe him back to sleep with a gentle rubbing motion and Tokitoh just forgets about everything and closes his eyes.

It's the next night, stupidly late, when the phone makes this fucking irritating piping noise and Kubota has to rescue it before Tokitoh gets a chance to kill it. Tokitoh grumbles and covers his head with a pillow, figuring it's probably just the quack or someone equally pointless, but then Kubota keeps talking and Tokitoh realizes it's Kasai.

That makes him remove the pillow and watch half the conversation, because if Kasai's calling now that means something's happened. And sure enough when Kubota hangs up the phone he slides out of bed, pulling his gun out from under the pillow-case as he goes.

"Kasai's got a WA body for us to take a look at," Kubo-chan says as he hands Tokitoh his clothes. "He says there's a live witness." Tokitoh mutters something under his breath and picks at the clothes. "Unless you're not interested. Then we can just go back to sleep." Kubota has that grin on his face, the yeah, I like messing with you, grin. He leans close enough to flick Tokitoh's nose.

"Oh, shut up. I never said that," Tokitoh says and gets dressed, without thinking about the fact that he's definitely awake, all the lights are on Kubota just touched him and he forgot to flinch.

The scene isn't the first time that Tokitoh has seen the end result of too much wild adapter, but it never fails to make his hand ache, watching. This one looks like what was left of a girl, her clothes in scraps of blood and guts all around her. It smells bad. People exploding is apparently one of the smelliest ways to die, and this whole club fucking reeks.

But it's nothing new. What is new is the blonde girl in the corner, talking to Kasai. Or at least trying to talk to Kasai, it looks like a kind of a weird three way conversation between the girl, a weird looking guy in a shiny suit and Kasai. When they get closer Tokitoh realizes that it's because the girl is talking some kind of gibberish that only sometimes makes sense and the shiny suit asshole is repeating it so it makes more sense.

"Hey, why is she talking like that?" he mutters, poking Kubota.

Kubota raises an eyebrow and smiles. "What, in English? Probably she's American. Or English?"

"English?" Tokitoh repeats and makes a face. He's seen people speaking English on the television and it never sounded that much like what this girl sounds like. "You're kidding. Fuck, that sucks. Why doesn't she speak Japanese?"

Kubota shrugs. "Why don't you ask her? I'm sure she'll be happy to explain."

And Tokitoh figures, why not? There's no other way to find out things then by asking right? Especially if Kubo-chan isn't going to tell him anything because he thinks it's funny or whatever it is he thinks. Asshole.

But when Kasai is finally done talking to the girl and Tokitoh gets around to asking her she just gives him this weird look, like he's said something amazingly stupid. Well, whatever. He doesn't know. No one tells him these things and it's not really his fault his fucking brain is screwing him over like this.

"What the fuck? Who the fuck are you? Who the fuck is this?" she says in mostly comprehensible Japanese and looks like she wants to start breaking things any minute now. Tokitoh is gratified to know that she can speak Japanese if she really, really wants to. Not that she actually bothers to answer the question.

At that point Kubota sits down next to her, lights her cigarette and starts to speak gibberish. English. Whatever. At least it's a little bit easier to follow when Kubota's doing it. He wonders where Kubota actually learned, though. Whatever Kubota is saying seems to be working, though, because she goes from looking like she wants to kill the whole world to looking like she might settle for beating the fuck out of it instead.

"So, I'm Shelly Ingridson," she says and gives a little bow like someone who read about them in a book. "Dozo yoroshiku."

"Shirri what now?" Tokitoh repeats, staring at her. Her eyes are very, very blue and he wants to scream at her and he doesn't know why.

"Shelly," the girl, Shirri, whatever, repeats, and her pale eyebrow twitches and mutters more shit that Tokitoh can't understand under her breath. Tokitoh has seen eyebrows that color before, but never on someone this close to him. It's weird shit, like seeing a billboard come to life.

"Yes, Shirri. That's what I said," he says, still staring at the eyebrows. They knit together, like she's getting really, really pissed. He wonders if she's going to try to hit him and thinking about that gets him really, really annoyed and maybe he'll hit her first. But then Kubota starts to talk to her again and she calms down. What a freak. Someone here is anyway.

"Thank you," Kubota finally says after a string of nearly impossible to follow back and forth. And then he does something that Tokitoh has never, ever, ever seen him do, with anyone, definitely not some girl. He offers her his hand and she shakes it. Like it's normal, like Kubota went around shaking people's hands every single day. All the time.

"Yeah, fine," she says, like she doesn't even care. Then she points her cigarette, which Tokitoh decides smells exactly like shit when it's burning, at the police. "Let's go somewhere we can talk about this."

So they go, gross smelling cigarettes and fucking ugly blonde girl and all. Tokitoh really, really hopes that she knows something important because otherwise this feels like the most pointless replay in the world. It's just that he can't remember what it's a replay of.


	8. Side Story: If You Meet the Buddha

This is a Shelly side story based off a throw away line from the next chapter. All credit and praise is due to **kkscatnip** for editing and helping me kick this bitch into shape. I should probably warn for violence, foul language and disturbing themes here.

Side Story: If You Meet the Buddha, Kill the Buddha

If You Meet the Buddha, Kill the Buddha

Shelly's shrink is a bored man in a pristine white button down shirt and khaki pants. There's a fly crawling across his shoulder, but he doesn't seem to notice it. Too fucking bad Shelly can't keep her eyes of the sucker as it crawls and hums. It's so fat and bloated looking, like a mega-godzilla fly. It is the most interesting thing in a very, very beige room.

"You seem distracted, Shelly," the shrink says. His voice is low and droning and he keeps looking over her shoulder at the clock. Sometimes he looks down, but never at her face. She's starting to feel like there's a big red target between her tits and he can't look away. Blaring lights! Neon! The whole works.

The fluorescent lights are buzzing. They're in tune with the fly. Or it is with them.

"Mmm?" she mutters.

"Shelly. You seem distracted. We were talking about your medication. You were telling me what it's for." He smiles, at the clock and then at her tits. The fly is crawling up his collar. It will be on his neck any second now. Any second.

"Yeah. Well, you know," Shelly says. The steel toe of her boots makes a satisfying thunk against the pressed wood of the desk in front of her. "I have bad dreams."

"Yes, so I see." He manages to pull himself from clock and tits to get a look at his notebook. She cranes her neck, but the handwriting is too messy to make much of. Shelly sniffs, she'd fucking slit her wrists if she wrote like that. What an idiot.

"So. Tell me more. Dreams?"

Shelly shrugs. "I don't remember much about my dreams, but they bother my mom. I guess I get loud waking up sometimes." For half a second her eyes blink closed and she sees a monster on the inside of the lids. Awful things, with ears and claws and teeth, like from a horror movie, but worse. They look hungry.

"And how is that working out for you? Your medication," he adds when she gives him a blank look.

"I don't know. My mom stopped complaining so I probably don't have the dreams anymore." The fly touches skin. Touch down! The shrink flinches, just a little and swats at it, but it escapes and settles back on his shoulder. Shelly stifles a grin.

"Well, that's good to hear." He thumbs back through his notebook and nods a few times. "I see that your grades are good. You seem to be doing very well. Why are you- ah. Ah. I see." He looks back up at her tits, with a bland expression he probably thinks is soothing. "Is there anything else you want to talk to me about?"

There isn't really, but Shelly has three guesses about what he's going to talk about and only the first one counts. She was stupid to have ever told her mom a fucking thing.

"Well. Yeah. I have something that works for me better than the meds. To help me sleep. There's a tree, down in the park. You know, on the west side. I go there to do my homework." She feels like an idiot talking about it and she kicks at the desk again, and then winces.

Shelly found the tree a year ago, when she was twelve. One particular willow tree. It had long drooping branches that went all the way to the ground on every side and parted like a curtain as if just for her. Hidden inside it was always cool and dim and quiet, as if the leaves and branches were much thicker than they looked and blocked the outside world completely. As if even the noise of Central Park couldn't break through this particular sanctuary. She doesn't tell the shrink any of that, but she'd been dumb enough to tell her mother that one time, so she's stuck admitting to it now.

"Homework?" Now the shrink is droning in time with the fly. It's gotten near the tip of his collar again. "And how do you like your homework? Not too hard, I hope." He gives her tits a stupid, gooey smile. Shelly resists the urge to tell him that he won't be getting an introduction. Pervert.

Shelly loves her homework. Even if it is boring and pathetic and intended for lowest common denominator idiots. She loves the neat, white corners of paper and the scrawl of the pen across the page. She loves watching the black ink spread on white sheets. The best are math and history, because they're the same thing to her, all about building giant towers of words and numbers and watching them rise into the real world as if they were living things.

"Yeah, not too hard. Homework is very soothing. I like numbers."

"Yes, yes, I see. That's very nice. Now, why don't you talk about how you feel about this tree?"

Shelly rolls her eyes and then almost kicks herself when she seems him write that down. Fuck. She doesn't need anything else about her in that notebook she just needs away from this asshole.

"It's a nice tree. I always felt like it was almost... mine. No one else goes there," she says. The fly touches down on skin again and the shrink swats it. This time it goes under the collar and the shrink makes the most idiotic face she's ever seen. She stifles a giggle.

Shelly shuts her eyes for a moment and imagines the tree and being under it, because it's way the fuck better than being here. That closed, dark, cool world, were everything is just different. She'd been there yesterday.

Yesterday, under her tree, when Shelly finished her homework she could lay down with her head pillowed on her jacket and stare up past the tiny cracks of leaves into the blue. She did that a lot, she would just watch, not thinking of anything in particular, and sometimes she'd fall asleep like that. Sleeping under the willow tree with her homework tucked under her arm and the sky spread out and hidden away all at once was the only way to guarantee no nightmares. It worked better than the pills the shrinks had given her to keep her from waking up screaming. They only prevented the screaming, they only made it so Shelly forgot the nightmares. (and fuck, the teeth and those red flashing eyes and she thinks... fuck, it wants to eat her...) But Shelly's tree worked every time and that was exactly why Shelly made sure she didn't fall sleep there more than once a week, precisely. Shelly refused to admit to a dependency, even on that.

"Yes, that's very interesting," the shrinks says, in the same flat tone of voice, bringing her back to the real world too abruptly. She gives him another glare. He's starting to look really fucking uncomfortable and Shelly hopes the fly is really making him feel it under the collar. "So, you believe that there is a tree in central park that belongs completely to you and no one else can go near it. Very, very interesting."

That's not what she said at all, but Shelly doesn't argue, because this visit can't possibly go on much longer. She wishes she could take a look at the clock too see how much longer but the shrink is starting to look happier whenever his eyes drop from the clock to tits, so soon. She kicks the desk one more time, just to emphasize the depths of her irritation with this asshole and his stupid questions.

Shelly never has questioned that it was her tree, right there in the middle of Manhattan. No one else ever used it, not the brats and their nannies or mommies, not the dealers or the freaks or the assholes Shelly's age. Just her, in all of New York.

"Well, I'm sure I'll get the chance to hear all about your tree on our next visit, Shelly, but I'm afraid we've just out of time for now." The fake sympathy is back in spades. Thick enough to taste, like cigarette smoke. Shelly nods and hops to her feet.

She already knows there won't be a next visit. Not with this loser. She hopes he never gets that fly out from under his collar and that it buzzes after him forever.

Shelly never doubted the tree belonged to her and no bored monotone man in bad clothes knew the words to change her mind. So she was understandably pissed off when she slid through the branches on a particularly bright and sunny Friday and found some bald guy dressed in an orange robe like a Buddhist monk humming and meditating under her tree.

The surrealism of the moment killed her. Like walking home from school and finding out you were in the Neverending Story all of the sudden. Shit. There were monks in Shelly's attic.

Shit.

Her first thought was just, fuck it, what's the point? It's easy enough to find a non-monk infested place to do algebra in a city like New York.

But, no. This was her tree, he could get his own. Too much time had slipped away in the psychiatrists' office defending her right to this tree for her to give it up because arguing felt surreal. Of all the bloody things.

No one knew about the tree, but Shelly, her mom and her gaggle of shrinks. No one but this meditating monk. Meditating out of place monk, in the middle of grass and green in the middle of concrete and steel. Meditating monks belonged in Tibet or Shangri-La not in Central Park.

Here they stood, in the real world, and here was a Buddhist monk meditating under her tree. The tree no one but Shelly was supposed to know about. If her tree could be infested with Buddhists, who else could wander in next? It felt like some spell cracked under his fingers when he found it and stepped through the branches. It made Shelly clear her throat and glare at the monk. He looked up with the most benign gaze there ever was outside of a doctor's office. Shelly gave him the sort of tightlipped, narrow smile that made her teachers flinch when she raised her hand.

"Excuse me, but this is my spot and I want you to leave."

Seventy pounds of pissed off Manhattan born and bred teenager demanding you leave now might effect a lot of guys badly. It figured that Shelly would get Mr. Genuine Monk Man, who just blinked and smiled at her serenely, like he was about to tell her to have a nice day.

"Ah, yes, there you are," he said, as if he welcoming her into his home for tea. "I humbly greet you, great master."

Shelly paused in the act of telling him why it was he had to leave and right now in order to glare. She got crazies and junkies screaming that the world was ending unless she could spare some beer money on her way to and from school every day. Enough to know crazy when she saw it. At least Monk Man kept it to staring instead of screaming and chasing like the psycho he was. Crazy or high.

"Oh, you're a junkie. Well, if you don't get lost I'll get a cop to get rid of you."

Baldy just smiled again, pushed his hands together, and bowed, like someone freshly hatched from a freak show or a fantasy novel. "I know this is a confusing thing to hear, but surely your dreams have made you suspect this. You are the current incarnation of a great master. I have come to meet you."

Listening to baldy the monk almost amused Shelly, like watching flies climb shrinks or fucking idiots act like fucking idiots. Until he said that. About dreams.

The urge to scream and throw things came on strong and sudden. Her dreams. Her mind curdling, sick making behemoth dreams of blood and sickness and monsters in the dark. Her dreams about being eaten alive, slowly, starting with her hands. Not that Shelly ever remembered her dreams. This smiling fuck invading her space knew nothing about her dreams.

"Yeah. Sure," she growled. "What the hell are you anyway? You sound like one of those assholes my mother overpays to give palm readings. And if you think I have money to overpay you, you are more wrong then you could possibly imagine."

No emotion but calm touched the monk's face. "You misunderstand, Master. Let me explain."

Shelly's teeth made the sort of grinding noise that her mother likes to tell her means she'll need them capped before she hits twenty. She shuddered and closed her eyes at the image, remembering monsters with teeth like nails that no caps could ever fix and blood. Teeth and red fucking eyes and -crack. A cracking branch somewhere pulled her back into the real world and she blinked. A man in orange still sat Indian style under her tree. Fuck, for a moment she'd had hope he might vanish with the rest of the delusion.

"If I'm your great master, I order you to fuck off now, please. Thank you."

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Master," he said and bowed his head apologetically. "Your powers are great, it was very difficult for me to even find this place." The corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled and she decided he looked like Mr. Miyagi dressed in orange. This guy was a character from a bad inspirational kung fu movie. A Kung Fu movie was staging an invasion of Shelly's life.

Shelly put up with a lot. School idiots, drugs, shrinks. Dreams. Kung Fu movies qualified as more than a lot. Kung Fu movies went beyond any reasonable expectation. There was absolutely no requirement that she stay and endure this shit.

"Fine. I'll fuck off, then. And I mean it about getting a cop so you had damn well better not be here when I get back."

Her next step was in the direction of a patrol car, but the thought of explaining Miyagi and his invasion of her tree sounded like grounds for another round of shrink visits to her. Instead Shelly walked home, kicking over random trash cans on her way. Miyagi-man had better not follow her. She kept looking over her shoulder to be sure no orange robes fluttered in the corner of her eyes.

Every time she looked back she knew that this time he would be there, smiling like an idiot. But every time she saw empty space. Getting home seemed to take forever, as though the blocks had gotten longer and wider in the last few hours. By the time she got to her front door she gave into the urge to kick the stairs with every step up. Her mom came home late on Fridays so it was all right. Even so, Shelly locked both locks on her bedroom door before she started screaming.

Shelly screamed herself hoarse. She drove both fists into the perfect eggshell blue wall over and over until spots of red splattered on it, like a pen had exploded. In the end her knuckles hurt and her throat ached, in a dull, deadly way that just seemed to go on and on while an asshole still had her tree and there was nothing she could do about it. The futility gagged her and she just wanted it to stop so she covered her head with a pillow and fell sleep.

It felt like she had just closed her eyes to sleep when she opened them again and sat bolt upright in her bed. The fact the clock on the nightstand blinked one thirty AM was the only sign time had passed. Shelly's throat was still too messed up to let her make noise beyond a whisper and cold sweat ran down her spine from a nightmare about a monk who loved her so much he turned into a monster in a huge fucked up house in the mountains. And she, Shelly Ingridson, had run away from some monk creep and let him have her tree.

"No way, you old hag," she whispered into her hands. She didn't know how those hands had come to cover her face, but now they were frantically trying to scrub moisture of damp cheeks. Her hands, but they felt disconnected from her wrists, like something else controlled them. Her cheeks, but they felt like they'd never belonged to her. The body she'd worn her entire life, and it was wrong, wrong and not hers.

"Just. No way."

Something shoved her body out of her tangled sheets, kicking and pushing the thick fabric to the floor, but it wasn't her. Shelly's bare feet brushed against the floor before they felt firm and steady in the act of standing.

The ratty jeans she had to hide to keep her mom or the cleaning lady from tossing them got tugged out from under the mattress and pulled on, along with an even rattier t-shirt. The switchblade, cool and comfortable, a present from her dad, fit perfectly into her jeans pocket. Dressed and ready, she tiptoed down the hall. It was early/late enough that there was no question of her mom being home and asleep. No lights on, though, so either she hadn't screamed loud enough to wake her mom, or, more likely, there was valium involved somehow.

The hilt of the switchblade felt reassuring in her hands, definitely her hand now and no one else's, as she slid out the door and into the night, and fuck danger and criminals. Nothing like that bothered her when she had something important at stake. Shelly had a mission.

Outside, past the alarms and the doorman, the streets were as close to empty as they got. Just some college kids, the occasional car whizzing by and a few gang assholes screaming cat calls in her direction broke the darkness. None of them came too close, so Shelly ignored them, the pedophile fucks.

It seemed like she walked forever, eyes straight ahead, fingertips stroking her knife. There were sirens wailing from two directions, and she could see flashing lights out of the corner of her right eye. A few blocks from the park some guy in camo who stank of vodka jumped out from behind a dumpster and screamed something about wogs. She ran until her chest ached and he chased her almost to the gates of the park before he gave up and melted back into the night.

And then she found her tree, under a solid yellow street light blazing from the path. Shelly's hands shook as she climbed inside, through the veil of branches. She took a few more shaky steps before letting her forehead press up against the smooth bark and her arms slide around the trunk.

It was still the same tree. Her tree and there were no monks and no nightmares and nothing was here but Shelly. Her shrink was wrong, her mom was fucked in the head and Shelly felt completely sane. Totally sane, for a person who'd just run into Central Park in the middle of the night to find a tree that someone else had dared to touch.

Even with her cheek against the bark Shelly could hear sirens echoing even through the branches. Sirens and someone's drunken laughter and further off, but not too far, someone screaming. Shelly squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the tree to do it's magic, to block out the world outside, and the nightmares and everything. She waited for the noise to stop like it always had. It didn't. The drunken laughter got louder, closer.

This is the same tree, the right tree, but someone else has been here and now Shelly felt the ache of worry. She never understood how the tree worked, but it only worked for her. Not other people. And the laughter was so close, like it was laughing in her ear. The branches rustle and Shelly head the sound of a person stepping inside, another fucker violating her tree. Of course the monk would come back after ruining the tree. Asshole. Shelly doesn't doubt the sound is him, the only other person she's seen here, because Shelly's life was turning into a Kung Fu movie and that kind of thing just happened in Kung Fu movies. As soon she was ready to turn around she would definitely kick the monk's ass.

Shelly's thoughts stopped and rotated backwards when the stranger under the tree spoke. In a Kung Fu movie it could only have been the monk. It wasn't.

"Hey, little girl," a voice, not the monk's, called. Low and cracked and not quite sane sounding. Shelly drew in a tight, harsh breath slid the knife in her pocket, keeping it low and hidden as she flipped it open. "It's pretty crazy to come out here all by yourself at this time of night."

Shelly bit the inside of her cheek and turned around, as centimeter by centimeter, drawing the motion out. Drunken laughter resonated through the dim, partially enclosed space. Shelly narrowed her eyes, trying to see in the dark. It's a guy, of course, that much is clear. His eyes looked like empty sockets of black in the sulfurous yellow street light. Empty eyes, like a demon monster from the dreams Shelly never remembers. Liquor fumes and cigarettes are almost thick enough to taste in the dark.

"What are you doing, pretty girl?" he mumbled and took a step forward. He stunk to the tree tops, but he didn't move like a drunk. Shelly's seen enough to know what a moving drunk looks like. The man looms very big and the tree trunk is pressed solidly against her back. "You looking for something?"

"Not you," Shelly said, in her iciest fuck off voice. It worked on teachers and assholes who try to sit with her at lunch, but here... here she pressed her fingertips against the tip of her knife for the assurance of it and feels warm, fluid drip down her hand. It doesn't hurt.

"A girl like you wouldn't be here unless she wanted something," he said and he was getting close now, close. Shelly could almost feel his breath and the fabric of his coat against her skin. "You'd be stupid otherwise. You stupid, girly?"

"Get away from me. I'm warning you," Shelly said and the hand in her pocket shook, but nothing else did.

"Little girl warning me." He's laughing, gasping with it. Shelly's eyes narrowed further and even her bleeding fingers went steady on the hilt of her knife. She stood petrified and trapped and fearless all at once. The man was very close now, his face pressed up against hers so that the stench of his breath was all she could feel. The touch of his mouth, rough and miserable. Shelly stood completely still and her breathing was slow and even. In and out. In and out.

"Are you a virgin, little girl?" More bright red laughter bubbles out of him and the stench of his lungs is enough to make Shelly gag. "Do you want to be?"

"You have such pretty golden hair."

So close. So close. His lips pursed and drew even closer, and then they were there, brushing hers and, yes, now. Shelly drove the knife into his neck with one harsh, shoving motion. He never screamed. Blood and blood and blood pumped from his throat in thick, wet spurts, splattering on Shelly's face and neck but he never screamed. Neither did she.

"No," Shelly said, very softly, when the blood finally stopped. Probably none left in him, now it all dripped off of her. "I'm not a virgin."

The tree was against her back but not her tree anymore. Someone else has been here. She ought to have known it wouldn't be her tree after something like that. It was so stupid to come here and she fucking hated that she was stupid. Her hands shook, from fingertips to wrists.

Shelly thought about calling the police, but she didn't. Let them do their jobs and come to her. If they asked she decided to tell them, but now she needed to go home. So she walked, slowly, like someone in a dream. No one seemed to notice her or if they did she'd didn't notice them. She took a long, hot shower and went to bed. She overslept and if she dreamed, she didn't remember it.

Over breakfast her mom pointed out trivia in the morning paper. "Oh, look, Shelly, they found a body right near our section of the park last night! Isn't that where your tree is?"

Shelly shrugged and finished the dregs of her orange juice. She tugged the paper over and stared at the black and white splotchy pictures of a man with his throat cut. It was on page six. "I guess."

"Well, I just thought it was interesting. So many crazies out there these days, honey. I hope you're careful," her mom said and turned her attention back to coffee and the style section. Later that day her mom was so happy when Shelly threw away the old jeans completely of her own volition she let Shelly spend more then one hundred dollars at the bookstore.

It was Monday morning, early, when the brick walls and wrought iron gates of Shelly's school came into view, that she saw orange robe was waiting for her outside the gate. Shelly thought about turning around or going in the back way, but fuck it. She kept walking. He smiled serenely as she approached and bowed very low, as if waiting for her to bow back.

"Good morning, Great Master," he said. "You made me search for you again." Shelly stared at him, with very blue, bloodshot eyes. He still looked like Mr. Miyagi to her, and he never stopped smiling. Like he was so happy to see her.

She wondered what he knew about the tree and the dark and the man and how he could smile like that if he knew. If Great Buddhist Masters could be reincarnated as thirteen year old murders the world was clearly fucked beyond all redeeming.

"If I ever see you again," she said in a low, blank voice. "I will get my mother's gun, find you, and fucking blow your brains out."

His smile faltered, just for a moment and something like confusion rippled through his black eyes. Shelly wondered what he really expected his Great Master to be like and how he could be stupid enough to think that person might look like her.

"You think I'm kidding, right?" she said, and took a quick step forward. He looked away, opened his mouth as if to say something. Shelly's palm cracked over his face, hard enough that the impact surprised her. Her palm hurt, but it was a good, even pain. Not like the way her skin itched where she'd rubbed it raw in the shower or the way her knuckles ached from pounding the wall.

"Shut up. I don't care. You just shut up. Stay away from me."

"But... but... master."

Shelly didn't listen, couldn't listen to another word. She turned and walked away, straight backed, eyes facing forward. If he followed her home, she didn't know about.

"So, Shelly, why don't we talk about why you're here?" This shrink is a woman, with crooked yellow teeth and glasses on a chain. Shelly looks her right in the eye and smiles at the tiny flinch.

"I don't know. I think I've been doing pretty well," Shelly says, and presses her palms against the shrink's desk as she leans forward. Her smile widens. She likes it when they flinch.

"Well, your grades are certainly very good," the shrink mumbles as she toys with the paper in front of her. The shrink's eyes keep dropping away from Shelly's gaze every time they meet. "That's wonderful, dear. But your teachers are a little concerned about your attendance."

"I go to school," Shelly says coolly. "I'm meeting the regents board's requirements."

"Yes, yes, I can see that's true. But, you're such a bright girl, Shelly. Such a pretty girl. We all just want to be sure you have the future you deserve." This shrink's voice is earnest and pitch perfect. Shelly wonders if she practiced the speech in the mirror before the session.

"I don't understand the problem. I'm doing fine."

"Yes, dear, but your nightmares-"

"The meds you guys have me on take care of those. I haven't had a nightmare in years," Shelly says. She flushed them all down the toilet. These days she sleeps with her mouth pressed against her pillow to muffle the screams before they get out. Maybe one day she'll asphyxiate. Maybe that beats the alternative.

"Mmm... yes, I see. No problems with the dosage?"

"It's fine."

"Well, we can adjust the dosage if you need to. Now, then," the shrink says as she flips through her file. "I understand that there was something about a tree?"

Shelly shrugs and looks straight ahead into eyes that won't meet hers. "Eh. That was just a kid thing my mom took way too seriously. I don't go to the park much anymore, anyway. Too busy with school." The last time she'd gone, the tree's trunk was covered in carvings and graffiti and someone had hacked away half the branches.

The shrink's fingers twitch nervously. "Ah. Yes, well that's good. That school keeps you busy. Have you ever considered becoming involved in extracurricular activities, dear? Really, you are such a bright girl."

These days Shelly shows all her teeth when she smiles and everyone flinches. Someone is dead because of her and maybe it shows in her eyes. Maybe they should flinch. Maybe Shelly is exactly what she is supposed to be.


	9. I'm Jealous of Your Cigarette

Well, here's more of this story.

I just want to let you all know that I read andreally appreciate the reviews. I'm never sure of a clever way of responding in this format, though. If you want to hit me up on vaingirlfic on lj I promise to at least get an individual thank you back to you. And if you get me here, well, thank you!

And those will be your author's notes for the chaper.

I'm Jealous of Your Cigarette

Shelly refuses to like Kubota because she never liked anyone on first meeting in her entire life. Rewind. Shelly refuses to like Kubota because the creepy vibes fairly radiate off him and he's visibly jailbait. She refuses to care that he speaks like death and velvet and that reminds her of doing her homework under a tree in central park under an endless blue sky. Muted, in her own little world, but with all the noise swept away under the surface where nothing will ever find it.

The idiot following him ought to have been easier to classify, except that he looks around a little too intently and with a rawness that Shelly can't look away from. Painful and too young and she's just glad she can barely understand a word he says because only hearing the tone of it makes her need to slap him, even if her Japanese doesn't go far enough to tell him that. Frankly it pisses her off to be this irritated at a fucking seventeen year old kid anyway.

They're in some noodle restaurant drinking lousy beer that neither of the boys had any trouble buying despite being underage. Kubota lends her a light for her cigarette, because she's lost her lighter somewhere along the line. Really, it doesn't matter how tough you are. Exploding people will make you chain smoke the first time you see it and Kubota seems to implicitly understand that.

"So, that's it," she finishes, telling what little she knows about Anna the hostess from before the poor bitch went bam in far less time then should have been possible. "She says she got it from a guy at a hostess bar. Eiji Something. I never met him but the way she described him you could tell he was some kind of Yakuza."

"Ah, so," Kubota says and says something to Tokitoh, who makes the kind of face people's mothers tell them not to make in case it sticks that way. Shelly ignores him.

"So, that's what I know," she says in slow stumbling Japanese mixed heavily with the English that Kubota seems to mostly understand. "What do you know?" There was no reason not to tell them any of her information, it's not as though it reflects badly on her, but that doesn't mean she doesn't need to know more. She's the one who had to clean dead person off herself.

They look at her for exactly the same amount of time and then turn to look at each other. Kubota rests his hand on Tokitoh's gloved fingertips. One glove, like he thinks he's Michael Jackson. Shelly wonders how she missed that before. It's probably just one more teenage fashion statement gone wrong that she doesn't understand, except Tokitoh doesn't bear much resemblance to the sort of idiot Shelly sees in her English classes that follow those trends.

"Hmm... I'm not sure such a thing would be possible," Kubota says slowly, like he's thinking of something else.

Shelly meets his gaze head on with a glare of her own. She wonders if anyone has ever stared him down before, ever not been enraptured by the sexy cool psycho vibes. When she watches him lean over Tokitoh with an expression of complete concentration on his face for the first time, she thinks she knows the answer without having to ask.

"Don't fuck with me," she says steadily. "I'm the one who nearly got butchered by that thing." Which, if Shelly thinks too hard about, should mean that she ought to be heading screaming for the hills as fast as possible and never get near any of this shit again. Thinking too hard about it sounds pointless to her.

Kubota gives her a slow, assessing nod and speaks English to her. "Ah, yes? Somehow I think you do fine." Shelly has her doubts about that, with no weapons and that thing having all the strength and surprise, but she'll let it go.

"Ha ha. Stop changing the subject. What was that thing? You told me you knew. I wouldn't be here talking to you otherwise and you know it."

Kubota shrugs and gives Tokitoh another long look, that Shelly almost thinks might be asking permission. He says something very fast and questioning that goes along with that line of thinking.

Tokitoh glares at her and then shrugs and mutters. "Whatever," or something like that. Shelly decides that the key to understanding a damn word he says might just be to take whatever Japanese For Beginners books instructed you to never say and say that. Except he takes it all beyond the level any text book ever thinks to warn a person about.

"We know very little. We are trying to find this, this WA. Wild Adapter, what that person, Anna, spoke of. The source of it. A drug, it causes- well. You see it already," Kubota says, as if choosing his words with extreme care. That's partly just poking through the language, but maybe more. Shelly's been paranoid for too long to imagine she can discount the bad feeling of maybe more she has just because of a little paranoia.

"Yeah, so what? Isn't that your uncle the policeman's job? Or are you two do-gooders out to save the world from injustice or some bullshit?" Shelly takes the opportunity to finish off her beer while Kubota translates to Tokitoh and Tokitoh makes some kind of choking sound.

"No. Also fuck you," Tokitoh says, the first comprehensible piece of conversation he'd directed toward her. Shelly raises her empty bottle to him, not at all surprised that swearing in English is something he almost has the hang of.

"Not in your wildest dreams, little boy," she says in English and grins at the expression of irritated non-comprehension on his face. He looks like he's going to jump over the table and sock her one at any second and for some reason knowing he could feels really right.

"And you." She points at Kubota who has a mildly pleased expression and a tiny smile. "Don't think you can distract me with his blabbering. Answer the question."

"Personal thing," he says and rests his hand over Tokitoh's again. For whatever reason that makes Tokitoh stop spluttering and look at least somewhat calmer. "For him."

"Not for you then? The dead people don't worry you?" Shelly knows the answer but curiosity compels her to ask. She wants to know if Kubota is really going to say what she thinks he will. If he's going to say the same thing she would say if she were in his place.

Kubota smiles and gives a tiny, weary little shrug. "If such things caused worry then I would lead a very difficult life, I believe."

"You don't care even a little bit?" It really does feel like poking at something raw and bloody every time Shelly asks about caring and death, but she knows the needles are all pointed inward and bloody flesh is her own. It doesn't seem to phase Kubota at all.

Kubota smiles like a school teacher answering a question he's heard far too many time. Shelly lights a new cigarette and waits for him to answer it anyway.

"You caring think help-" he starts in English, shakes his head and stops. Starts again in Japanese that Shelly loses the thread of almost immediately, but clearly makes Tokitoh sit up and look confused and unhappy, before sliding back into English. "Satori comes and goes without substance. I want to say is that- do you think caring is helpful?"

"Helpful?" Satori? Shelly doesn't quite follow, but she's closer to it now. She grins and taps the ashes from her cigarette onto the floor because finding an ashtray at the next table feels like more effort than it's worth. "You're preaching non-attachment?" Shelly asks, before blowing out a round, clean puff of smoke.

Kubota raises an eyebrow and then shakes his head and smiles with her. He taps his cigarette against hers to light it and she lets him. "No. I do not intend that."

"Good. It's Buddhist shit. I despise Buddhists. Some freak in orange robes followed me around for a while when I was a kid trying to tell me I was the latest incarnation of a holy man. God, can you believe it?" Shelly's laughter is hard and loud. She gestures from cigarette to beer to sukiyaki, the gesture encompassing herself in general.

Kubota shrugs and leans back in his chair, letting it move under his weight. When he smiles it's mild sort of expression and doesn't reach his teeth.

"I believe you," he says with an accent that makes it sound more like 'bereave'. For some reason that makes Shelly laugh harder, and people are staring at her but she doesn't give a fuck. She's been stared at all her life and the curse of genetics just means the staring is that much worse here.

"This is the life I'm living, ne?" she tries in Japanese. "Nothing else. I am trying." And as she says it she wonders if that's true. If she was trying at NYU in her lecture halls and seminars and piles of books in a corner library carrel. In her rock and roll and one night stands. And the shrinks who fucked her head more than anything else. Maybe she stopped trying when she was thirteen and met that monk and everything else. Or maybe really trying was telling all of it to go fuck itself and running away to the other end of the world.

Well, trying has gotten her this far.

Kubota nods as if he might be able to read her mind, not just what she's saying. She wonders if she could read his if she tried hard enough. She wonders if he's ever killed anyone before and if he knows that she has.

"I understand," he says. "I think you do not care so much about dead bodies, yes?"

"I care if they involve me," she says. About second later she wonders why she isn't mad as fuck and ready to kick him down for being a roundabout talking prick. Shelly really doesn't like anyone the first time. So what's wrong with Kubota?

"Yes," he says as if all questions are answered now. "I am the same." Shelly shrugs her shoulders and steals a cigarette from the open pack in his coat pocket and he doesn't flinch.

It's almost a shock to see how his expression changes when the café door swings open behind Shelly. She can't really read his face, but what she does see is enough to make her reach into her pocket for a knife she doesn't carry anymore and turn around slowly.

She is expecting yakuza with tommy guns or something, not a young man in his mid-twenties with golden eyes. Not Goku. True, Shelly had already been completely convinced that guy wasn't going anywhere, but this was still sooner than she'd expected to see him again.

"It's all right," she says, holding up a reassuring hand and pressing it against Kubota's arms. Kubota looks almost as surprised to be touched as Shelly is that she touched him but she had to do it. Shelly isn't carrying a weapon but it's completely obvious from the way Kubota moves that he really, really is and now is a terrible time to use one. "I know him."

"Oh," Kubota says, followed by something in Japanese that Shelly's brain is mistranslating because she thinks he said something about a demon or a ghost and Goku strikes her as deeply weird but hardly supernatural.

Tokitoh chooses that moment to chip in with something that Shelly can follow and therefore can't just ignore. "Hey, who's that guy? What the hell, what aren't you tell me? Just speak Japanese already."

No one has a chance to answer because Goku is striding over to their table like the fourth chair next to Shelly was always intended to be filled by his ass.


	10. Don't Push Me, I Am Not Okay

Hey, it's part nine, in which there are interpersonal difficulties. Here is also where I raise the rating, for half naked people and such, because we all know the naked is worse than the violence.

Enjoy!

Don't Push Me, I am Not Okay

In nearly every way that counts Goku feels completely different from the starving kid Sanzo found in a cave five hundred years ago, but he still feels stupidly giddy when he sees those familiar eyes give him a surprised and mildly irritated glance. He feels even giddier when she kicks the legs of the chair next to her, pushing it out for him to sit.

Goku plops down close enough to almost touch her knee with his, and grins at everyone at the table. All three of them, right here at the same table with him. Shelly actually looks almost happy to see him.

Kubota, though, he looks back at Goku directly when their eyes meet. He's unsmiling, not wearing much expression at all until you look down at his hand where his fingers lace tightly in between the gloved fingers of the boy next to him and the knuckles whiten are the edges. The boy, who has a name that Goku has to learn before he falls into the trap of calling him Gojyo, has very dark blue eyes and looks poised on the point of fight or flight, like something is communicating to him from Kubota through their joined hands. Then his eyes meet Goku's and go wide, as if he's not sure what he's seeing.

"Hey," he says quickly, leaning forward, elbows splayed on the table as far as they go without letting go of Kubota. "Do I know you from somewhere?"

Goku knows for absolute certain he's only met this boy once in his lifetime and he was conscious then, but the hopeful, curious expression makes Goku feel almost hopeful himself. Hakkai and Sanzo don't seem to remember a thing, but maybe, maybe Gojyo might?

"Where do you think you know me from?" Goku asks carefully.

"If I knew that I wouldn't be asking you, would I?" the guy says, intonation rising with every word. "What the hell is this, a question game? Why won't you just tell me?"

"He doesn't know anything, Tokitoh." And that's Kubota, neutral and level as always, but the anger he seems to keep just under the surface sounds much closer then Goku needs to hear it. At least now the boy has a name. Tokitoh. Goku repeated it silently, attaching it to those wide, not quite familiar eyes. "He was there on the day you and I met. That's all."

"Well, why doesn't he say so himself?" Tokitoh spits out, turning a vicious glare on Kubota, though his fingers don't even twitch in Kubota's grip. "Or doesn't he speak Japanese either?" Goku can't help but stare at their joined hands and wonder. Gojyo and Hakkai. Huh.

"Of course I do and it's true. I've never seen you in your life before that day. Or after until today," Goku says as honestly as he can and wonders when he took up telling idiotic half-truths, anyway. Probably about the time they started locking people in mental hospitals for talking too much about things no one believed in. Kubota giving him that weird 'I'm thinking about killing you now but it's not worth the effort to be rude about it' face doesn't help. It just makes Goku really, really want his Hakkai back the way he used to be, where if he thought about killing people those people weren't Goku.

"What does that even mean?" Tokitoh demands, and obviously stupid half truths don't really work on him.

"It means he doesn't know anything about you or WA," Kubota says, still giving Goku a look that makes Goku wonder what it was he actually did. "He just has a way of turning up at meaningful times." Kubota smiles, eyes crinkling, lips stretching over teeth and gives a very polite little nod. "Or isn't that so?"

"Uh," Goku blinks and back slowly against his chair. He can feel Shelly's soft, in drawn breath next to him and wonders if she can tell about Kubota too.

"Right," she says suddenly, pushing to her feet. "I don't know what the fuck you procession of idiots are talking about and I could actually give a shit. My day has been as bad as I need it to get already so I'm going home to find a goddamned shower. And if anyone bothers me without a really, really damn good reason- like the fucking apocalypse- They'll wish they hadn't."

With that she grabs the bag by her chair, pulls out a few bills and drops them on the table before marching out of the restaurant, head held high. All three of them stare after her for a very long moment.

"Hey," Tokitoh's voice breaks through the silence. "How come no one ever wants to tell me what she's talking about? I want to know!"

Kubota shrugs and his expression shifts away from the frightening side of mild and he smiles at Tokitoh. "She was just sharing some useful advice with us. About getting home and showering. What do you say?"

Tokitoh looks like he's going to grumble for about five seconds before he shrugs and starts shouting for the waiter to come and wrap his noodles for him. Goku knows without having to ask that this conversation is entirely over. No spilled blood, no violence of any kind, and by the looks of the table only two packs of cigarettes and a six pack have been consumed all around. Goku figures it went pretty well.

Not long afterwards Goku fishes Shelly's address out of his pocket, deciding she might not mind seeing him again. He finds sunflowers at a corner store on Shelly's block and buys a bunch wrapped in bright yellow paper. He likes the idea of her face when she sees them. Maybe she'll get mad and whack him over the head with them but maybe she won't. It will be worth it either way.

When he knocks on her door, no one answers, so he knocks louder until a loud, "Yeah, what?" echoes out from the apartment.

"It's me Goku!" he yells back. For a long moment he wonders if he ought to yell again but then he hears the sound of deadlocks being unbolted and the door squeaks open. Shelly looks freshly scrubbed in a loose shirt and jeans; her damp hair is tugged back into a ponytail. She looks him up and down from head to flowers and then to feet, with almost no reaction before she takes a step back and leaves just enough room for him to come in.

"Hey," she says, taking the flowers from him with one hand when he holds them out. "I was hoping you'd get hit by a taxi and it would put your ass out of commission long enough for me to get some sleep. No, huh?"

Goku smiles. "No. Do you like them? I got them for you."

"Whatever. It was a waste of your time buying them, but at least it distracted you long enough to give me a chance for a shower." Shelly stares down at the flowers and makes a face, but she gestures for him to follow her toward the kitchen where digs up a pitcher to serve as a makeshift vase to put them in.

"I'm glad you like them," Goku says happily, hopping over to smell them after she puts them in the corner of her desk, right by a window in the tiny living room.

"Whatever. Sure," she says. "So, why are you here?"

Shelly has her arms wrapped around her chest as she speaks and the expression on her face makes Goku want to flinch and smile like an idiot all at the same time. That's a fan wielding expression right there. He's annoyed her. All is right with the world.

"I just came to see you," he says, because it's true. Really, there isn't anything more to it. He could say he wanted to make sure she was okay, but he had no doubts that Sanzo could take care of herself.

"Sure," she mutters. She looks down at the flowers and then back at him, like she's working out some kind of problem. "That's what you want. To see me."

"Is this how you usually operate?" she asks icily, after a brief pause in which Goku doesn't say anything. A restless fingertip taps against the button of her jeans and she's staring him down like he's a challenge. "Because I don't have the time or interest for playing these kinds of games."

Goku shakes his head, still grinning. Her eyes are impossibly blue and frozen and seem to go on forever. He wonders if he'll ever be tired of just looking at them. "No. No problem. I mean it I'm just happy to see you, that's all. It's not a game."

"Ah, so I see," she says, with a foreshortened glare, followed by another very strange, speculative stare from head to toe, as if assessing something. "You don't have any trouble looking. Was there something else you wanted to see?" Goku can't remember seeing that expression at all, at least not from Sanzo. It's almost like a youkai wondering if someone will taste good, but not really even that. It makes him turn just slightly pink without understanding why.

"Um- Shelly-" Goku's starting to get a glimmer of an idea of where this conversation is going and something weird and raw flutters in his stomach. She looks so strange, hungry and angry and upset all at once and Goku can't think of a good way to make it better when he isn't even sure what's wrong.

"Huh. Yeah, that's my name," she says and takes a step closer. "Well, since you seem so interested I think we should just get it out of the way, don't you?"

Shelly's still not smiling; in fact she looks like she ought to be carrying a gun. "Relax, I'll let you see what you wanna see and it'll calm you down and then you can stop acting like an idiot over nothing."

And then Goku realizes that her hand was resting on her jeans for a reason, because about two seconds later the jeans are in a puddle on the floor and she's unbuttoning her shirt. And. Goku can't find his jaw. He thinks he dropped it.

"Um. Um. Um." He blinks and between blinks her shirt is unbuttoned and he's looking at breasts. Naked breasts. Round and high and soft looking breasts with tendrils of golden hair brushing over pink nipples. Breasts like that.

"Sanzo?" he squeaks.

Shelly actually laughs, and slides the loose white shirt off her shoulders. Even laughing, even like this, she still looks angry and upset. As if she weren't standing in nothing but a pair of white boxers and bare feet. "That's the weirdest mispronunciation of my name I've heard yet. You had it down better than that just a minute ago."

"Um. Sorry." Got to stop staring, but it feels like his eyes are glued on. Her face. She's laughing and it isn't a nice laugh, but he doesn't think it's aimed at him. She's beautiful.

"Come here," she says, offering a beckoning hand to him, fingertips curled inwards. Close enough for him to reach out and take without stretching. "This is what you want, isn't it?"

Goku feels the heat on his cheeks, bright, bright red. "Erm. Uh. Idunnoyourfreakingmeoutpleasestop," he mumbles. He's holding her shirt. How did he end up holding her shirt? His fingers are clenched in the thin fabric, too hard, and he can't look at her anymore. Pretty as the sun under a blue, blue sky and pale as ivory and all, all wrong.

"No?" she says, but he's staring at her shirt. Staring, staring so he doesn't even notice how close she is until her fingertips are lifting his chin and he has to look into her blue eyes and see the questions reflected there. He gulps to keep from saying something he shouldn't, or maybe drooling. Either one. "Why not?"

"Um. Well you see-" Why not, why not, why not? The question might be answerable if it made any sense to begin with. Shelly's still looking him up and down and making him look at her.

"You're kind of weird. Are you a virgin?" she says slowly, thoughtfully, like she's just pulled the idea from thin air and Goku bites back the urge to ask her why she would think that. Is he acting like a virgin?

She's so close and there are breasts right next to his cheek. And smooth, fair, fair hair. And he's looking into her angry, tired eyes and he realizes that something here is completely not fair, even if he doesn't know what. "Um. Please not now. Please put your shirt back on?"

For a moment nothing happens at all, like time's gone sticky and painful and this awkwardness will go on forever. Then Shelly shrugs, her face gone completely still and closed. Goku has absolutely no idea what she's thinking because nothing Sanzo ever did came close. Sanzo would never have done _this_ to calm him down or whatever other reason she has. Goku can't help but feel like he's done something really, really wrong to get here in the first place if he only knew what.

"Okay," she finally says and lets go of his chin. "Whatever. If you don't want to you can just say so. It's not like I really wanted to anyway." Not only is he not holding her shirt anymore, now she's buttoning it up again with swift, pale fingers. "I just want you to quit bugging me. Got it?"

"Wait I-"

"Got it?" she says in a tone like grinding rocks. He's never seen anyone get dressed that quickly. "Don't fuck with me."

"I'm not. I-" Goku's over his head so far and drowning in mud and knows it, but not how to fix it. This was not how it was supposed to happen. It was just, yelling and then, wham, breasts, and her eyes and his head's spinning and oh, man he fucked up.

"Just shut up and don't do it again."

Goku doesn't have a chance to say anything before she walks out of the room with fast but steady, evenly paced steps, managing to abandon him completely. Really tricky in a way since it's a tiny apartment. And frankly, it's her tiny apartment. Goku almost wants to cry like a little kid, wondering if there's anything he can possibly do to fix any of this. He doesn't know, but he's still here so he has to do something. He trails after her and stops by the slammed bedroom door, waiting a few breaths before calling out to her.

"Shelly! I'm sorry, I'm really, really sorry," he says, and hopes he sounds as sorry and confused as he feels. "If you want I-"

"Just shut the fuck up!" a voice screams from the bedroom. Goku blinks when he realizes she sounds more pissed off then upset. "I've had a long night and I'm going to sleep. You can do whatever you want as long as you leave me alone for the next eight hours."

Goku stares at the closed door for an endless moment, just contemplating the doorknob. He feels slow and lost in a sea of muck, so it takes him at least that long to realize that he hasn't actually been ordered out of the apartment. In fact, that she seems to assume he plans to stay.

"Score," he mutters under his breath, and then he grins and settles in to wait on the comfy looking sofa, turning the television on low.


	11. The Marquis de Sade Don't Wear No Boots

Here goes part ten. A very bad plan is formed and there's bad language and some shounen ai. Nothing shocking.

The Marquis de Sade Don't Wear No Boots Like These

Kubota likes the way Tokitoh grumbles and squirms in his sleep. Sometimes, when he's awake, Tokitoh can sit quite still, only his fingers moving over the button of the video game console, but he can never manage it asleep. Asleep he musses the sheets and his hair and Kubota with equal abandon and ends up curled in the open crook of Kubota's arm, drooling on his neck like a little kid. Kubota has no problem wondering out loud if appreciating the finer mechanics of being drooled on makes him a pervert. Of course it does.

Which is fine, since there is a list of things Kubota has never been able to admit out loud from the moment Tokitoh opened his eyes and demanded to know what was going on the first time. Right on top of that list is that he, Kubota, couldn't care less about what was going on, Tokitoh's lost memories or where he'd come from. He's tried to say it, since it seems wrong to pretend, but the words don't quite come out. Just saying something like that outright seems rude, somehow, and Kubota has never been interested in being rude. At least not about this.

He has no problem being rude enough to trace the soft skin on the inside of Tokitoh's elbow, until he gets a soft, sleepy moan and a hand batting at him like an irritated cat's paw. He presses his lips right at the point where shoulder meets arm and stops just short of actually waking Tokitoh up.

It isn't that the problem of Tokitoh is uninteresting, anything but. A puzzle even, how does a cat end up in a dead end alley with no memories but enough attitude to make up for it? Unfortunately Kubota just never seems to manage to care about puzzles. Sad that Tokitoh cares about everything, loudly and vehemently, and where he came from comes in on the top of that very long list of everythings. There's only one way to respond to that without being unreasonable.

Kubota isn't interested in being unreasonable and it's not exactly rocket science. Kubota does what he can.

What he can includes calling a blue eyed American girl and asking her to do something for him that he has no right to expect. Kubota assumes that she'll say no and that will be the end of the problem, he'll have done what he could. Tokitoh doesn't like her anyway and Kubota doesn't like anyone, which he seems to have in common with Shelly.

He doesn't expect her to say yes.

"All right," Shelly says on the phone and he wonders if there's been another communication breakdown. "I'll find out which club Anna worked at. It shouldn't be hard to get them to at least give me an interview." No, she definitely understood what he was asking. Huh, well this was interesting.

He pokes through his English vocabulary and tries to come up with phrasing that actually makes sense. Though, frankly, talking to her should actually be a lot more difficult than it is. She just seems to get it. "You certain? It is not required."

"The fuck it's not," she says in icy tones and he smiles, imaging her expression. At least she can swear bilingually without much effort, something she has in common with Tokitoh. "Bitch exploded on me. I have some crazy guy sleeping on my couch who won't leave. And then there's you and your boyfriend."

Kubota's smile brightens into a grin, which there is no one awake or present in the room to see. Tokitoh squirms and drools on him some more. "Crazy guy?" he asks, focusing on the new information. Not that he's that interested but it seems polite to ask.

"Crazy guy. Goku. You know the freak," Shelly says and the frustration in her tone seems to vibrate through the line.

Kubota's smile disappears. Oh, that crazy guy. Because he's not interested in Shelly this shouldn't bother him. And never mind that Goku only seems to show up when the bodies hit the ground, there are no shortage of bodies in Kubota's life.

"Ah so," he says, neutrally as he can. "Are you certain this idea is good?"

"What is this, a game of cryptic?" Shelly says into the phone, loud enough that Kubota winces and pulls it away from his ear. "If you know something about him I don't, spit it out."

It's nothing like having Tokitoh angry at him, though it's soothing in it's own way. Kubota gets the idea that Shelly might actually kill or maim if she gets angry enough.

"Excuse me, I don't know what 'cryptic' means," Kubota says in his careful English. "But I am quite certain you know more about Goku than I could know. He seems to find you likeable." The phone clatters on the other end of the line and he hears silence and a dial tone. Kubota smiles and puts it back into the receiver.

Unfortunately Shelly calls back about an hour later, about the time Tokitoh is grumbling himself further toward wakefulness.

"So, I have the name and address of the club," she says, not as if she were never annoyed, but as if she were teeth grittingly ready to tolerate him anyway. "Are you interested in finding out more when I do or not?"

Or not. Kubota shrugs. "Certainly." He stares down at Tokitoh and brushes his fingers through silky black hair. Tokitoh's eyelashes flutter like soot against paler skin. Tokitoh is frowning in his sleep.

"If you need assistance..." Kubota murmurs into the phone, already knowing his offer will be rejected and not sure why he made it. It feels wrong. Shelly shouldn't be helping him, he shouldn't be helping her. They have too much in common.

"If I do, I have your number," she says. He hears the dial tone. She calls back ten minutes later and Tokitoh groans and covers his head with a pillow.

"Moshi Moshi," Kubota murmurs, even though he sees her name on the caller id.

"What's wrong with you?" she says, without preamble or attempt at politeness. It sounds more abrupt because she's trying to speak Japanese. "You asked me, but now you don't seem to have any interest in me doing this for you."

"It's not a great plan," Kubota says with a shrug she can't see. "Dangerous. One American girl with not too much Japanese in hostess club. There's a limit to what you can learn."

"I can get some of the WA. Anna did. That's more than you have to go on now."

"Yes and now you have bits of Anna on you to clean," Kubota offers helpfully.

She snorts audibly. "I'm not Anna." No, of course not. She has fearless eyes. No fear, no love, only pure, distilled anger separate her from where Kubota used to be before he met Tokitoh.

"Maybe you can tell me why you want to do this? Not so many people risk this much for curiosity."

"Fuck you. I do what I want." Dial tone.

Kubota is almost expecting the phone to ring, and it does, this time half an hour later when Tokitoh has stumbled into the bathroom.

"My interview with the club is in two hours. Meet me for lunch after and we'll make the plan better," she says. "Don't bring your blue eyed asshole."

Hmm... Kubota stares at the phone in his hand. That was- well, maybe. "This concerns him. Don't bring your golden eyed death omen."

"I don't intend to." She named a restaurant on the edge of Chinatown and Kubota wrote it down. "Death omen. Jesus."

Dial tone. This time the ring comes five minutes later.

"I didn't say that because I wanted to fuck you."

Kubota raises an eyebrow and stares in the direction of the bathroom where the shower is running. "I know that. What would be the point?"

He hears a soft whistling breath over the line. "Hey. Why is he a death omen?"

"What? Oh, I guess he isn't. Probably it's me who is." Kubota stands up and walks over to the bathroom door, pressing his palm against the paint. Just holding it there. He can almost feel the pressure of the water.

"I think I'm not understanding your Japanese again."

"That's probably true," Kubota says mildly.

Her tone is increasingly strident. "Because if I was understanding that right you just sounded like a total fucking idiot, and that's your little buddy not you, right?"

Kubota blinks. "Hmm? I don't think so."

She laughs. It's a pretty sound, like something breaking. "Okay, you are an idiot, because you damn well know that everyone dies. People aren't death omens, Hakkai. There are no curses. Your life is what it is and then you die."

"Now you're preaching Buddhism at me, gaijin."

She laughs louder. "Fuck, I wouldn't do that. Tell me you have feelings to hurt and I promise to try my best not to hurt them."

Kubota lets his forehead press against the door next to his palm. "If that's what you want, I can tell you that."

"I'm glad you do, because I don't. Tell me at lunch. Goodbye, Kubota-san."

"By the way who is Hakkai?"

"What? No one, why?"

"No reason," Kubota murmurs. "See you at lunch." This time he's the one who hangs up at the phone, tossing it in the general direction of the living room. He opens the door to the bathroom with a jerky motion and then steps forward in a few short strides.

"You lunatic pervert," Tokitoh hisses, spinning around and glaring like a wet cat. "At least take your clothes off before getting in the shower."

Kubota gives a tiny shrug and watched Tokitoh move. Water soaks through his shirt and trousers right down to the skin in moments. "Hai, Hai, you're right. Should I take them off now?"

"It's too late. You're already wet now."

"So I should leave them on?" Kubota grins and lets his hands rest on Tokitoh's bare soap slippery shoulders.

"Idiot," Tokitoh mutters. If Kubota had stepped into the shower like this a month ago he might have gotten sliced to shreds with the claw for his trouble. Instead he just gets the buttons of his shirt sliced off, one by one, while Tokitoh glares at him with ferocious concentration.

At lunch Shelly is wearing a cotton print dress and a disgusted frown. Tokitoh smirks at her and Kubota shrugs before sitting down.

"So, at least it pays better than teaching English," she says.

"Never mind, fuck that. Did you find anything out?" Tokitoh says, quickly enough to leave Shelly blinking at him in mild confusion.

"You talk too fast," she mutters. And then something a lot ruder under her breath. "Why am I helping you again?"

"I don't know," Kubota offers cheerfully. Tokitoh glares at him, and the tips of claws dig into his skin right through the leather gloves.

"Yeah, whatever," Shelly says. "I'm starting tonight. We'll see if Anna's Eiji guy shows up." Kubota almost shakes his head. Shelly is about as subtle as a guided missile and will probably make almost as good a hostess as Tokitoh. Then again, she is tall and blonde, which counts for quite a bit. Maybe she'll get the masochistic salary man crowd.

Not that it could ever be that easy. "And what about the other one?" Kubota asks. "Your Goku?"

"My Goku?" The look on Shelly's face makes Kubota grin despite himself. "In what way is he mine?"

Kubota stifles laughter because he doesn't actually want to fight. Even if that might work in getting her to give up this project in disgust if for no other reason.

"He's not yours then," he says instead. Shelly glares holes through him. He's glad he's the one with the gun. "He does keep turning up, though, doesn't he?"

"Well ain't that the truth?" Shelly mutters.

"Mmm?"

She shakes her head and taps her cigarette against the ash tray. "Never mind."

Kubota presses the tip of his cigarette against hers to light it and just watches her for a moment. This girl. This gaijin girl. What was this about her? It was starting to bother him. "Fine then, I won't mind. Watch yourself."

Under the table he gives her an offering, grip first. Her eyes go very wide but she doesn't indicate that she's now holding an illegal gun in the middle of a crowded restaurant in any other way.

"You can use such a thing, yes? Now the plan is better."

"My father was with the marines," she says as if in answer. That may not be an answer but the smooth way she takes it and puts it away is. She gives the quick, edge of a smile. "Really, I just like them."

She stands up and bows Japanese style, to him and Tokitoh. Tokitoh is staring at her, as if he were also puzzled about something. Kubota will have to ask him about that later.

"I appreciate the gift. I'll call you when I have something," she says. Kubota has no doubts that she will. He's definitely done what he can for Tokitoh's little quest this time.


	12. It's Only Trouble

This time out your main warning is for violence. Lots of violence. For the most part our heroes enjoy this kind of thing, though.

As to all the nice feedback, thank you all very much! I was actually lamenting my inability to draw a while ago, because I find the idea of a picture of girl Sanzo in a white button down shirt and combat boots unspeakably appealing. So, if you want to draw her, Taltos, go right ahead and let me know so that I may fangirl you effusively.

It's Only Trouble

Working in a hostess bar sounds something like a cacophony of loud voices and bad karaoke and the weirdly cheerleader like sounds of de-stressing office drones.

In a high pitched voice some sake breathed asshole greets her breasts with a loud, "Konbanwa! Nice you meet!" as if the flesh might answer. Shelly manages to get over her surprise when they don't every time.

"Fuck you," she mutters and doesn't smile at them. The routine never changes, they squeal, she mutters. She's undercover, so only allowed to mutter. Then again, most of them have English so lousy it might not matter. Maybe she can scream English invective and no one will notice? Maybe she can shoot them all? Not anywhere vital, just the mouth would work out well. They don't need mouths, do they?

"You Shirri beautiful!" she's told. For some reason it's even more annoying than when Tokitoh calls her Shirri. At least that idiot is about as interested in her breasts as dead squirrels. Of course he seems to be gay, so that isn't exactly a credit to him.

The smells always come together like a malaise. Cigarettes, beer and sake, and the salary men sweating under their suits despite the air conditioning. The stench of desperate reeks worse than any frat boy bar in midtown Manhattan ever could, for all the people are more polite. Polite while sober, anyway.

It sounds like desperate and just a little too loud with pop music blaring in the background, often with out of tune drunken karaoke filling in the lyrics Shelly can never understand. Especially when they're in Engrish. But karaoke isn't that bad. It's the voices, talking about love and sex in earnest tones, like actors on the set of a soap opera that actually get to her. Shelly has always assumed there was nothing that could make her general contempt for homo sapiens any more extreme, but working here changes her mind fast.

"I rabu Shirri," they say, and try to kiss her hands. She stares at them and they laugh, like there's some greater joke she's missing. But then the gaijin apparently always misses the joke. One thing that helps is the ever-growing folded stack of yen stuffed in her shoe. Drunken assholes apparently like to overpay to use her to practice their English and groping techniques. They'd like it better if she stuffed the bills in her bra, but no one in the universe pays enough for that.

It also helps to feel the weight that is Kubota's gift to her tucked firmly against her leg, covered by a fall of champagne colored silk that the mama-san told her she had to wear because button down shirts and jeans just don't do it. The dress makes her feel like a Bond girl on parade and the salary men dig it a little too hard. They crowd around her as though she were smiling and flirting like the other girls, even when she hisses and her fingers twitch for the gun.

"Shirri-san is frightening," they say, but they laugh like they don't believe that's true. Like everything Shelly is and does is more like a put on or fucking PMS. It reminds her of a shrink's office in some way she can't name and she spends too long in the shower, washing smoke and sake out of her hair.

No matter what she told Kubota she's actually got no clue why she's here or why she keeps coming back to this damn bar. It's not because she gives a fuck about Tokitoh Minoru's issues, whatever they are. It's not because she's never felt as comfortable around another person as she has Kubota, despite the fact he's insane and probably homicidal.

However, it may in fact be to get away from the psycho on her couch. Escaping Goku is a sensible reason to be here, one Shelly can live with and does. At least this isn't as boring as acting the human tape recorder for a bunch of crazed junior high brats.

Working in a hostess bar looks something like a cross between a misguided idea of what the boardroom of an elegant office in Manhattan looks like, an equally confused idea about a Paris café, and an explosion of neon. All the men wear perfectly pressed suits and all the women are beautiful, except for Shelly, but no one notices that. As the night wears on, it's full of drunken salary men whose suits are pressed from sitting on their asses, now wearing their ties around their foreheads like bandanas in a fashion statement Shelly doesn't actually understand. Doesn't want to understand.

Shelly sits through a week of nights on replay, leaving her exhausted, hating everyone, and with a wad of tax free cash and gun she can't fire at anyone that just aren't making her feel any better about it. The new plan is to screw the old plan, call Kubota and tell him he can take up hostessing himself if he wants more information.

She never gets the chance to make the call. Something happens in the form of a man who moves a little too quickly and looks around a little too much. After a parade of drunks, it's like ice water to the face to see someone actual sober and alert and Shelly perks up and watches him. This one's not just some new salary man who wants to tell her she's an angel of the morning in horrific English. Then he gets closer and smiles at her and she can see the edges of a tattoo through his white shirt. Ah. She'd been here long enough to notice that tattoos seem to go with yakuza more often than not.

"Miss Ingrudson," he pronounces her name with exquisite care. "You are very lovely. Madam Hanako told me you were beautiful, but she did not give enough credit. I am Nakamura Eiji."

He's enough of a break from the routine that Shelly nods and holds out a cigarette for him to light instead of just cursing him off. He keeps looking over her shoulder and twitching even as he speaks the rote flattery and she wonders who he thinks is going to shoot him.

"A pleasure, Nakamura-san," she says, and resists the impulse to let her hand twitch to the gun. This fucker's making her paranoid but he could actually notice her going for a weapon. And then there's his name. Eiji. Eiji. With tattoos and definitely matching the description. Anna's Eiji?

They talk, but not about anything interesting.

"I've heard your name," she says and leans and, forcing a smile. "They say you're the go to guy around here." She tries to remember how she scored drugs back in college, but draws a blank. It hadn't been very hard.

"Go to guy?" Eiji says and laughs. He turns to the waitress and orders them both drinks. "I am afraid I don't know what that means."

Shelly digs her fingernails into her palm to keep her hand from twitching. "Well, you're a well connected man." Smile, smile, fuck. She feels like her face might break. It's possibly a good thing weeks here have forced her to remember some impulse control. Right now it takes all that control to kill the urge to just shove the gun up his nose and make him cooperate. It's just too crowded here for that.

"I like to think so," he says, with a faux modest bow. Then he tells her about the baseball tickets he can score for her if only she'll come with him.

Shelly forces a giggle, but it comes out more like homicidal rage. She hopes he'll take it for junkie twitchings and make her a damn offer.

Unfortunately the offer he makes is more like this, "I think if you would only give me the chance I could make a lady like you very happy." He smirks and stops looking over his shoulder to look down her dress, even if only for a moment. "Come home with me?"

She isn't surprised, even in the short time she's been here, he's hardly the first to ask to make her oh so happy at home with him. She almost says yes, just to move things along, hopefully with gun to face, but stifles the impulse, hard. He can't expect her to just agree, it'll look suspicious.

Going home that night it feels like there are bugs crawling under her skin and she damn well knows it isn't an acid flashback. Just the want for this to be over, to shoot something, to know something, to at least have some answers about why idiot girl exploded all over her.

Even Goku gives her a funny look and sidles away when she gets home after first meeting Eiji. She knows he knows something is up, with the late nights and the unceasing rage those nights have been honing, but he doesn't ask. He's lucky he doesn't ask, because she really, really wants to kill someone, and he's on the possible target list.

Shelly will never be able to trace just how things ended up the way they did. It takes another week to get him coming right to her seat whenever he enters the bar, and about as long before she casually mentions Anna's name in conversation and he reacts. Shelly watches him move back, eyes just a little wider then they should be and smiles without meaning to.

She slides off her stool to the lady's room and calls Kubota, but gets his voice mail. No big deal, she'll talk to the actual man soon enough.

"It's Shelly," she murmurs, softly enough that no one in a nearby stall could hear. She tries to think of a way of saying what she wants to without tipping anyone off. A code of some kind? "I've met a guy who seems, uh, a little wild." Damn, codes suck. No one will know what she's talking about or everyone will.

"I'm going to see what else I can get. Talk to you later."

She clicks off her phone and steps outside and lets Eiji take her by the arm to the club door. She's expecting a lot of things at that point, complete with some payback for having to put up with far too much shit. There's a mild prickle of nerves, because Shelly loves guns, but she'd never shot an actual person with one. But then it can't be much worse than using a knife. None of it matters, she feels ready. More than ready, frustrated and pissed and needing to take it out on someone's face.

Getting things over with is what she expects. What she gets is the loud retort of a gun and then Eiji is crumbling against her side, a hole where his head used to be, killing off her one and only lead to the Wild Adapter.

Shelly operates on instinct. She shoots back, the movement it took to bring the gun from her holster to firing position so fast and smooth she's not sure how it happened. She never thinks about whether shooting back is right or necessary, it's just what has to happen.

Shelly learned about the idea of shooting from pictures of her dad on the wall with his army buddies all around him and a rifle propped on his knee. Learning was cake, like she'd been born with steady hands and good eyes. There was something unbelievably Zen about aiming and squeezing the trigger, over and over, bam, bam, bam. The kick back in her hand, the motion of muscles, everything. The sound when metal hit flesh.

Somewhere in the background screaming people are fleeing the club in floods. Shelly ignores them, but she notices that when she falls back into the club for cover the place is empty. Except for gun men. A lot of gun men. She's counted at least twenty, maybe thirty, definitely more than she has bullets.

Bam. She ducks back, finding cover.

Four down. She settles in to get the best value of blood shed for bullets.

It takes a few minutes to realize that somewhere on the other side of the building there's another firefight. She can hear the echoes when she ducks behind a post and the shooting in her immediate vicinity stops. Who else could be shooting? Her brain freezes, contemplating rival crazies and other such shit. Rival crazies...

"Kubota," she murmurs, smiling without realizing she's doing it. She'd never been in a fire-fight before, but if she'd thought about it she'd never have expected back up in the form of a psycho Japanese gangbanger. She might have guessed that calling him would bring him here if there was the promise of shooting things involved.

Bam, and there goes one in a bright red shirt, who'd just tried to peek around a corner. Stupid thing to do so he dies like an idiot.

One more bullet. She should have asked Kubota for rounds to go with the gun, but she hadn't expected this many goons. Lame thing to have on your epitaph. _I wasn't expecting that many_.

Fuck.

Bang, the sound of a bullet missing flesh and ricocheting. Her last bullet and it was a miss. Double fuck.

Shelly settles down behind the pillar and presses the warm end of the gun to her lips for luck. Well, it really is a missile weapon now.

A bullet whizzes over her shoulder and then silence. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three-

Bang, bang, bang, and the she whirls around, prepared to brain whoever it is that's jumped in next to her with the butt end, but a hand closes over her wrist, catching it hard.

"Cigarette?" Kubota murmurs, his lips practically brushed up against her earlobe, he's suddenly that close. "I thought you might have run out, so I brought you more."

"Sounds good," she says back, taking a cigarette and a fresh cartridge from him without asking any stupid questions.

The expression on his face as he survey that situation is... interested. Kid playing a video game interested. He edges over past the cover and then slides back, as if ducking a bullet before smiling at her.

"Sorry about all this," he says, between firing rounds. "I didn't realize the level of yakuza interest in this club." Shelly's counted thirty guys here, or something like that. Level of yakuza interest fuck.

"Don't apologize. Just keep shooting," she hisses.

"You have blood on your cheek," he says in response and gives her another tiny, not quite there smile. Then a second later she has his thumb on her cheek, wiping the blood off, and a long, bony palm resting on her chin. Fuck, down Shelly, remember the evil little boyfriend. Remember how damned young they both are.

Kubota's still smiling.

"I'll be back, okay?" Kubota says suddenly, and draws his hand back, all the way back into his coat pocket. Not waiting for a question as to where he's going or why, he slithers away. More gun fire cracks through the club, and damn this is going to look bad to the cops. Well, lock and load.

Everything smells strange, like guns, spilled drinks and dead things. Shelly lights a cigarette. Quiet presses in on her. Kubota's off killing people somewhere, but she's not jealous. She inhales smoke in smooth, slow breaths. She doesn't know why she's here. Not in Japan, not in this club, not here, on the floor, someone else's gun in her hands and someone else's cigarette in her mouth.

Maybe that Goku guy will be send her body home to her mother, assuming her mother will want it. Maybe he'll want it. She wonders what he's doing now anyway and then shrugs it off. Shelly's got better things to think about. Like aim, squeeze, something falls down, repeat. Repeat. Breathe in smoke. Repeat.

Kubota's cigarettes taste like shit. She has that thought on the brain when she feels something, heavy, heavy, sharp tear into her and there's suddenly no breath in her lungs.


	13. Your Number One With a Bullet

Chapter the next, which has essentially the same warnings as the last chapter. Thanks for all the nice reviews and sorry about the cliffhanger. Less of that here.

And thanks to kkcatnip for the edits!

Your Number One With A Bullet

Tokitoh first reaction to coming home from after a very brief excursion to the 7-11 for milk and candy to a Kubo-chan less apartment is irritation, because what the fuck? Kubota was here when he left and if he was going to vanish all of the sudden he could have bothered to call Tokitoh and share his plans first.

That first thought gets quickly shoved aside in favor of the next, which is that, number one, Kubota is not actually in the habit of vanishing for no reason, and two, there's a message on the machine.

Tokitoh hits the button and makes a face when he hears the freakish sounding accent on the other end. He'd never known how possible it was to mangle a perfectly nice language until he'd met Speaks English-san. Shelly. Whatever. Worse, half the message is in English, everything after the 'Shelly desu', which would have been the part that was fine to say in English because it's not like he couldn't recognize her voice or something. Why would someone even go somewhere people only spoke Japanese if they didn't speak it themselves? After all, it wasn't like Tokitoh is going to England or whatever wasteland she came from, speaking their stupid language or otherwise, so why should he learn?

Tokitoh figures his options are to stay put and let Kubota do whatever he was doing or to find Kubota and kick his ass for not waiting five fucking minutes for Tokitoh to get back. His decision is easy, but the finding Kubota part might be hard, if only because he has no clue what Shelly actually told him.

Lucky there's a plan.

He's out the door in the time it takes to grab his shoes, and shoves them on his feet on the stairs. He thinks about heading right for the bar, but Shelly's apartment is on the way and it'll save him looking around if she's not there. He doesn't bother with a train, figuring that waiting around on a platform will kill him, he just runs the whole way, and then up the narrow staircase in her building.

The door takes a minute to open so Tokitoh applies his fist to it, and then waits, twitching with both hands stuffed into his pocket until a pair of blinking golden eyes stare at him from the other side of the doorway.

"Tokitoh?" Goku says blearily, like he'd been asleep. Which, there was just no way, because he got to the door too fast for that. Too slow, but still too fast for that.

"Where's that girl?" Tokitoh demands, pushing past Goku into the apartment. "Not here?"

"Shelly?" Goku asks, and Tokitoh wonders how the hell Goku gets his tongue to make the weird sounds of her name.

"Yeah, her. " Tokitoh looks around, but there's no sign of her and he has to admit that at least she's not exactly the type to skulk in the back somewhere.

"Oh. She's not here," Goku says and rubs his eyes, though Tokitoh can tell Goku is staring at him through his hands. "Why, is something wrong?"

"How the fuck should I know?" Tokitoh mutters, because it's not like people tell him what's going on. Kubo-chan seems to think it's funny when he doesn't know things and Shelly's an asshole. Even if she's a girl, she's definitely an asshole.

"So, you have no idea where she is, right?" he adds turning toward the door already. No time for this shit. He has to go find Kubota and kick his ass.

"Hey, wait, I didn't say that," Goku calls after him and Tokitoh can hear the sound of someone stumbling into their jeans. "Wait up, I'm coming with you."

That doesn't seem worth arguing about so Tokitoh just shouts, "Yeah? Well you'd better keep up because I ain't waiting for your ass." Then he dashes back down the stairs and out into the yellowish lamp lit streets.

He almost brains Goku when he feels a hand on his shoulder holding him back half a block away. Only Goku's palm keeps his fist from connecting and he bites back a scream that's only partially from frustration.

"What?" he forces out.

"Wait. I'll get us a cab."

Tokitoh narrows his eyes but keeps the commentary down to, "Well, you should have said that before."

There's one on the corner that they hop into, and Tokitoh can't remember ever having actually been in a taxi before. This one seems okay and he plays around with the onboard karaoke machine to distract himself while Goku stares at him like Tokitoh's the one who is insane.

The cab is probably a good idea, but Goku doesn't have to stare like that. It's not like it's Tokitoh's fault that he didn't have the money for one. At least it makes up for wasting his time at the apartment. Goku pays off the cab fast when they get to the block with the club. He has to because Tokitoh is already out the door and sprinting toward the sound of gun shots.

He stops when he gets to the doorway, because just getting his head blown off isn't going to help Kubo-chan that much.

It's not more than a second, trying to figure out where everything is, mostly, but the next sound he hears is from behind him. Pitched low, like a growl, but so loud it makes Tokitoh wince. He turns his head slowly, like moving through quivering jello.

He wants to say it's like Goku's on WA, but it's not. Tokitoh draws back defensively, inhuman hand clenched at his side, eyes wide as saucers. It's like he knows what this is without knowing anything about why this basically normalish guy who'd been rubbing his eyes sleepily and chasing him down the street a few minutes ago is now something else. Which feeling might weird him out normally, but nothing can out-weird the thing that is Goku, golden eyes narrowed to slits and a strange, strange smile twisting his face.

Goku stalks past Tokitoh like he's not even there, which is fine. Just fine. Except the part about Goku walking defenseless through the open corridor of people shooting at each other, and Tokitoh wants to yell at him, but he's scared to. So scared he twitches and feeling that just pisses him the hell off. Goku going off makes him feel stupid and bitter so about two seconds later he dives into the hall after the asshole.

What's next actually happens, that is Tokitoh can see it happen, so it must have. Where the bullets hit Goku and something- or nothing happens. He doesn't pause, he doesn't bleed, he doesn't even blink. Goku's just running and then there's red mist where there'd been a gunman two seconds ago. Tokitoh stops where he is, swaying on his feet and swearing under his breath.

This is so not okay.

"This is not okay," he yells, running after Goku, never mind what kind of stupid that is. He's so focused he doesn't see the arm in front of him, catching and stopping him, so he nearly eviscerates it.

"Shh…" It's Kubota's voice, Kubota's arm, with long bloody scratches running down it, but Kubota doesn't sound bad. "It's okay. Don't look."

"It's not," Tokitoh mutters, staring as another gunman goes down. No one's shooting at him or Kubota at all, every bit of attention focused on the monster that is Goku. It's a little better, knowing at least Kubota is pretty much intact, but okay is not the word. "It's really, really not."

"Don't look. Just come here." Kubota's hand is over his eyes, like he's a spooked animal, drawing him back with slow, steady steps. Tokitoh draws in slow, shaky breaths and lets him. All he can see is Goku's inhumanly sharp face and the red mist that had used to be people.

When Kubota uncovers his eyes they're by a pillar, with the crumpled body of a familiar blonde girl at the bottom. Tokitoh bites his lip and kneels down next to her, already reaching for a pulse. He can't tell, but he thinks she's breathing and the hole in her side is leaking blood.

"Press your hands against her side. Like this. Hard," Kubota tells him, taking Tokitoh's hands in his and showing him how to do it. Tokitoh realizes right away that most of the blood on Kubota's hands is from this, not from Tokitoh scratching him.

And, fuck, her eyes are open. Very blue, and not quite there. Shelly's looking, but she doesn't seem to be seeing him at all. She can see something, though.

"Oh, it's you," she says gruffly. The breath seems to be whistling through her body.

"Yeah, yeah, it's me," Tokitoh agrees, pressing his hands the way Kubo-chan showed him. He isn't really thinking about what he's saying at all, just the girl under his hands bleeding her life out. "You messed up your pretty white skin really good this time, huh?"

"Mmm..." she murmurs. "You're still such a freak of nature. Get lost and help someone who needs it."

"You need it more than anyone else here. Not that I care. Prick," he mumbles back, still applying pressure. The blood doesn't seem to be letting up. Her eyelashes are fluttering pink against her hazy blue, blue eyes, like she'd dyed them.

"Idiot," she spits out. "Help me up."

"What are you, completely nuts? You'll bleed out if-"

"Help. Me. Up. Or do you not understand me when I talk to you?" she spits out word by deliberate word. There's blood on the corners of her mouth.

It never occurs to Tokitoh that it's weird that he does, every single word. He's only thinking about how much it would suck if she dies. But he helps her to her feet. Somewhere in the big room, silence has settled. The shooting has stopped.

"Over there," Shelly says, gesturing with her chin. Tokitoh tries to keep at least one hand on her exit wound. "And give me my gun back."

"You won't be able to hold-"

"Give it!"

"Sheesh. All right, all right. If you want to die who am I to say you can't?" He slides the gun between her fingers and miraculously she doesn't drop it.

"Over there. Move your useless ass," she grates out. Tokitoh is about to yell at her until he looks up and sees exactly what's 'over there'. He moves, fast.

It's Kubota, gun pointed straight in front of him, staring down Goku. Staring down the golden eyed creature that looks a little like Goku. And Kubota's face is still, quiet, the sort of face that makes people stop and stare and wince away when they see it. Nothing like the face he shows to Tokitoh. It almost makes Tokitoh drop Shelly and run, but somehow she's not slowing him down.

"All right! I see you!" she shouts. "What the fuck are you doing now, Goku?"

Goku turns his head and gives a very small, almost eager smile. Tokitoh wants to run, which makes him want to attack. See if the guy would still look so scary eating his fist. He can't though, because if he lets go of Shelly there's no way she'll be on her feet much longer.

"Well? Get your ass over here," she says in a softer voice. "I'm not waiting for you forever, you know."

Goku gives a tiny, almost animal growl but he comes. Tokitoh's eyes meet Kubota's over Goku's shoulder and just stay there. Kubota's got a gun trained on Goku's back, but those bullets before hadn't even made a scratch. Tokitoh tries to gesture at him to get out, to go, with his one free hand, but Kubota just gives him a gentle smile and a shake of the head.

Tokitoh's gaze doesn't move, he feels like he can barely breathe. Just watch Kubo-chan like he might not get to watch him again. Shelly is saying something, soft and angry, but Tokitoh doesn't understand a word of it and he's too distracted and caught to try.

He whispers something to Kubo-chan, but even he isn't sure what he wants to say.

"Well. That's fine," Shelly says, sounding very, very far away, and Tokitoh snaps his attention back to her as her eyes roll back and she crumples against him. She's surprisingly slender for all she's stupidly tall for a girl.

Tokitoh tries to catch her but he doesn't have to. Goku has her in less than a heart beat and he's slowly lowering her to the ground. He's whispering something in a language Tokitoh's forgotten, but he's actually talking. There's something wet on his face and only some of it is blood. Goku's face, the face he sat across from at lunch, the face Kubo-chan doesn't like, but a person's face.

Tokitoh lets out a breath he barely realizes he was holding and stumbles forward a step. Two steps, and then his forehead is resting against Kubota's shoulder.

"I already called the ambulance," Kubota says, surprisingly gently. "We shouldn't be here when it comes." It takes a moment for Tokitoh to realize Kubota's not really talking to him.

"I'm not leaving," Goku says. He's got his hand tangled in blood soaked blonde hair and he doesn't look up.

"You won't do her much good if you get arrested. The police in this country have a nearly one hundred percent conviction rate, you know."

"Shut up! I'm not leaving her!" Goku howls. Kubota's hands tighten on Tokitoh's shoulders. Tokitoh doesn't question the wisdom of pissing Goku off anymore, because there doesn't seem to be a point.

Kubota's voice is very calm and steady, without even the usual hints of teasing or anger. Tokitoh can hear sirens somewhere. "If you stay with her now they'll still take you away. Or else you'll have to kill the people trying to help her to stay near her. Is that what you want?"

"Just shut your mouth! You're not my friend!" Goku hisses. He's finally looking up and Tokitoh's glad that intense, bitter gaze isn't on him. He looks away from it, back into Kubota's shoulder. "You're no one! You're less then no one, you might as well not exist."

"That's true. I know," Kubota says with that same calm, like Goku's made some extremely obvious point. It makes Tokitoh want to scream at him for agreeing or beat the shit out of Goku, but he holds still. "So come away with no one. She'll be fine."

Goku blinks and shakes his head, like he's on the wrong side of a dream that he hates. But he stands up, shaky and slow as a newborn fawn on a nature documentary. So slowly. The sirens are almost on top of them and Kubota pushes Tokitoh gently and deliberately to the door.


	14. Been Smoking Too Long

Second to last chapter. Thank everyone for their kind words and/or pretty pictures. All feedback is welcomed and much desired.

Been Smoking Too Long

In the last few weeks Goku's learned a lot about Shelly, who is not Sanzo even when she is. He's learned her couch is soft but lumpy and seems to change its shape just to accommodate him. Her fridge is very clean and mostly empty unless he fills it. Shelly never cooks, but she does yell and that's fine.

He learns some things because she tells him, like that she's from Manhattan, born and bred. Central Park West she says, with a faint wrinkle in her brow, like she's daring him to challenge her on some point he doesn't understand. He finds out that she teaches English, but she laughs when she says it, like it's a big joke. Her mother's a gallery owner and her father was a marine.

She never tells him, but he finds out very quickly, that she dreams. Muffled screams into the pillow every night and red eyed in the morning. Nearly every morning she spends too long in the shower and smokes most of a pack of cigarettes instead of breakfast. He finds out she likes men with long hands and narrow necks but when she brings them home none of the sounds from the bedroom come from her. Shelly screams when she sleeps, but she fucks in silence.

In all those weeks she never once asks Goku why he's there.

Now she's in a hospital room, tubes and needles attached to every blood vessel, like some kind of horrible creatures from one of her nightmares. Goku's not even supposed to be here, but he can't be anywhere else. He sneaked through security to press his face against the glass showing the operating room. He hates how much is visible and open to anyone with the nerve to peek, because he knows that Shelly would hate it, but she isn't awake to rage now, so he has to hate it for her.

He hates that her eyes don't open, not even when doctors and nurses in masks crowd closer than she likes anyone to be and open her up in ways that are more intimate than she'd ever care to be exposed. He's got his nose so close to the glass that it fogs up and he can't see a thing, but he waits for her eyes to open the way he always waited for Sanzo when he was hurt. He waits and he can't forget the time that Sanzo's eyes didn't and every year since. His palms bleed where his fingernails dig into skin.

He almost doesn't hear someone stepping in behind him. Someone who smells of dry tobacco and guns but doesn't walk like Kubota, which is good. Goku never wants to look at Kubota Makoto ever again, if he can help it. A total stranger is better, even if he smells like Kubota.

"So, you're the boy Makoto asked me to look the other way for," a man's voice says. It's low and a little husky from what sounds like tiredness. He's standing next to Goku, looking through the glass and Goku has to resist the urge to bite his throat out for looking at Shelly. She's been looked at enough, damn it.

"I'm Kasai," the man continues, clearly oblivious to Goku's homicidal instincts or else doing a good job pretending to be. "That's a pretty girl you have there, gaijin or not. Don't worry too much. The doctors are pretty confident."

Goku lets out a long breath and the killing rage fades out. Okay then. That's okay. Shelly can kill whomever she wants for looking at her herself. "Is that right?"

"Yes, that's what they say."

Goku let himself turn around enough to get a look at the man. He looks middle aged and saggy, dressed in a trench coat with an unlit cigarette between his lips, like he wouldn't know what to do without one even if he can't light it so close to the operating room. He smells like Kubota, but doesn't look like him.

"Who the are you, anyway?" Goku asks narrowly. "What do you mean look the other way for?"

Kasai shrugs and nods toward the girl. "She's at the very least an important witness... to something. You can't really expect the police to overlook that sort of thing."

"You're a policeman?" Goku says, unable to suppress an unfriendly growl. Witness or something? What's that supposed to mean anyway?

"That's right, you're a clever boy." The man gives another smile that Goku wants to bite him for, except he looks so tired doing it.

"How do you know Kubota anyway?"

"Mmm... know him? I can't say I do. My nephew's not the sort of boy a person gets to know."

"Nephew? Really?" Goku's voice gets louder and more surprised sounding than he'd meant it to. It's just the idea of Hakkai- or the boy he'd met on the streets all those years ago having a family weirds him out. The idea he came from somewhere instead of just spontaneously being generated from cigarette smoke and dusty books.

Kasai lifts an eyebrow but the question doesn't seem to worry him much.

"Sure, really." Then he turns his attention back to Shelly laying open on the operating table. "She must be some kind of girl. Tough."

"Yeah," Goku says softly, temporarily forgetting everything else. "She's tough."

"She'll probably be deported," Kasai says, as if answering a question even if Goku hasn't asked one. "There's not enough evidence to prosecute her for anything other than possessing an illegal gun and using it in self defense. So it's deportation."

"Um. Oh," Goku whispers, fingers pressed to glass again. He wonders if this will bother her. She didn't seem like she wanted to go home.

"I thought you'd like to know."

"Yeah, that's true." This whole moment feels weird and awkward and Goku wonders if that's inevitable or if it's because this man is Kubota's proxy. Kubota who dragged him away from Shelly for what was probably both their own goods, but if she'd died- but she probably won't. "Um. Is he okay?"

"Makoto? Sure. He usually is. Toki-boy too."

Goku nods slowly, not surprised, but mildly relieved. Well, if he has to leave Japan anyway, he hopes- he doesn't know. Something.

"She won't be awake for at least another day," Kasai says, a few long, silent minutes later.

"I'll wait." After that there's only more silence, but every now and again there's the smell of dusty cigarettes and a Styrofoam cup of hot coffee gets pushed into Goku's hands.

Shelly wakes up at a quiet moment almost thirty-six hours later. It's 3 am and Goku's hands are shaky from caffeine. He almost walks in the room but a nurse comes by and does things, like pulling a breathing tube that makes Shelly gag and wince and giving her water. It seems like forever until she finally leaves and Shelly is blinking at him.

"I dreamed about you," she says hoarsely and the words sound like a challenge. "You lost your mind and I had to shoot you to make you shut up."

"No, you usually just shot at me. You only hit when you were really pissed," Goku murmurs, grinning and taking her hand. Her fingers close around his with an unexpectedly tight grip.

"It's not bullshit, is it?" Shelly says. Her eyes are closed and she sounds exhausted and angry all at once. "You're really not- not human. I'm really- someone else." She gives a sharp head shake that makes her cough a moment later.

"You're really you. Really Shelly. You don't have to shoot at me to make me shut up. Not anymore," Goku whispers, because that's true. This time, she hadn't. Maybe it's age, maybe it's the limiter he's worn so long it's a part of his skin now, not a separate thing at all. Maybe it's Shelly that's different. He'll probably never know. He just knows he lost control for her and she found it for him, just like Sanzo once had.

"I don't care about that shit. I'm tired," she says. Her eyes are open, staring out the window into the buzzing hallway, lit with fluorescent wall lamps. Goku just nods, but she doesn't look at him.

"I don't care. Whatever it is, this is my life. Mine to live. Not that- that other thing. I don't want anything from that," she sounds like she'd be spitting if she weren't so tired. "Not anything."

"Oh," Goku mutters. "Not anything." He stares out the window too. He might be able to forget she were there if he weren't so focused on her every breath. If her fingers weren't wrapped up so tightly in his that they were going numb.

"I miss New York. This city sucks," she adds a moment later, as if making some kind of concession. Goku shrugs. She's still not letting go of his hand.

"You're probably going to get deported," he says a moment later.

"Huh." She snorts in a way that makes him look at her after all. She's smiling, just a faint curve of lip, but really smiling. "Well, that's okay. How about you? You like New York?"

"Me?" Goku's eyes go very, very big and he nods quickly. Never mind about his hand going numb. "Yeah! It's great! Great food! But you said-"

"I mean, you know, whatever," she continues as if he weren't talking. "It's getting kind of boring. Guiliani isn't much of a mayor if you ask me. There might not be a point to you going there."

"No, no, I want to!" Goku rushes out, stumbling over the words.

Shelly nods and her eyes narrow a little around the edges. "But you don't have to. Just because of something that happened some other time. All that's over. Whatever it was."

Goku grins. "But, Shelly, what if I get hungry."

He laughs even when she slams him over the head with a pillow a lot harder than anyone in her condition should ever have been able to. It's a few minutes before he manages to stop laughing and by then she has the pillow tucked back under her head. Her eyelids droop heavily and she yawns.

"Fucking drugs," she mutters. He slides his hand back between her fingers. "Fuck my head.

"Yeah," he whispers.

She blinks her eyes open again. "Look, I can't now. If they're deporting me, so tell him, okay?"

"Tell him? What, who?" Goku asks even though he has an inkling as to who. Shelly was doing some godawful favor for Kubota, he knows more than he wanted to about that. Tell him something about that?

"Tell him I'm sorry that fucker got shot. But he'll find out sooner or later, about the WA shit." Shelly yawns heavily and her fingers loosen in his.

"Oh, yeah," she adds softly after a pause in which Goku almost thinks she's fallen asleep. "Tell him, definitely in the next life. Definitely, definitely. Fucking Gojyo already got his chance this time out." And then she's gone, out like a light before Goku gets a chance to do more than blink. He decides he's better off not thinking about any of that too hard. Drugs talking.

He almost decides not to, but somehow or other he ends up knocking on Kubota's door sometime the next morning. Shelly's dead asleep and fine and maybe he does need to talk to Kubota. It's not his fault he's not who he's not. It's not anything at all.

When the door opens it's just Tokitoh, blinking and rubbing sleep out of his eyes. He glares when he sees Goku.

"What do you want? Go away." The door slams in Goku's face, hard enough the air whistles. Goku laughs inspite of himself.

"Hey, it's not funny!" An angry voice calls from the other side of the door. "That gaijin idiot is fine, right? So go bug her!"

Goku waits for a brief moment before the door opens again and Tokitoh is still there, still glaring holes in him. "And, you know what else? You're an idiot too! And Kubo-chan's not even awake so-"

"Well, I am now," a mild voice says from the doorway across the hall and Kubota pads into the room in a pair of loose pants, hair sleep mussed. "So, you'd better come in."

Goku swallows hard, nods and steps across the threshold into Kubota's world for what he hopes will be the very last time.


	15. Forty Feet Beneath My Feet

The end. Just when you thought this story wouldn't. End, that is. And, because I love you, you get omake. And because she rocks, Taltos drew a very nice picture of Shelly. You should all take a look.

Forty Feet Beneath My Feet

Goku doesn't know what would have made him leave Kubota's small apartment happy. He's not really angry anymore, not even when he meets hazel brown eyes under a thick layer of glasses and bemusement. He wants to be indifferent, to move on. He wants his old teacher and friend to look at him and smile like Goku matters to him. Maybe the closet he'll ever get to that is Kubota's cool, calming fingers on his shoulder when he lead him away from Shelly bleeding on the floor.

Instead of reassurance he gets the offer of coffee, which Kubota presses into his hand with a small smile and a formalistic, "I know it it's only instant, but please take it." Hakkai might have actually meant the words.

Tokitoh glares at them both, as if personally offended by ritual and politeness, and retreats to the couch and a playstation, muttering something under his breath. Goku wonders if he's ever disappointed in Kubota for being- whatever he is. But the idea of imagining him ever being disappointed, ever, is unfathomable. Maybe for this him this sharp, deadly, empty boy is exactly what he needs. Maybe.

"So, what brings you here?" Kubota asks cheerfully. "Is she well?"

Of course, because if Goku is here now it has to be about Shelly. Shelly doesn't seem to be disappointed in Kubota either. Maybe it's easier if you don't know what you're missing.

"She's doing better. They say she'll be stable enough for transport in a week or so." Mostly because Shelly was loudly interested in nothing so much as getting out of this 'antiseptic stinking pest hole, before I really get sick and croak'.

"She says sorry about the guy who got shot. And that if you get off your ass and work on it you'll find that WA shit you're looking for. And..." Goku pauses and bites his lower lip. And in the next life... What was that supposed to mean, anyway?

"And?" Kubota asks with a politely raised eyebrow. Definitely what? She'll beat him to death with a fan? She'll shoot him? She'll what? Goku wonders why people have to say things that don't make any sense.

"And that there's definitely something in the next life," Goku adds in a quick mutter, throwing a sideways glance at Tokitoh who's pretending to be too caught in the game to listen but keeps dying in game, messily and colorfully ever few seconds.

"Yeah?" Kubota's smile is soft and relaxed and suddenly he looks like a kid. One who just got- something good. Straight A's, or knowing Kubota, just broke someone's fingers for the very first time. "Okay. I'll try to remember that."

"Hey! Hey! What's that supposed to mean?" Tokitoh's voice calls from over by the couch. It's the only warning Goku got before one very annoyed looking boy vaults over into the room and directly into Kubota's personal space. "You don't just say things like that to people! It's weird," he adds. His fists were curled up by his sides.

Kubota tipped his head back and gave a bright, considering smile. His hands slid over Tokitoh's in a way that made Goku look away and tell himself he wasn't seeing anything, even though it was just hands.

"Well, possibly it doesn't mean anything," he murmurs.

Goku clears his throat before Tokitoh catches his breath to start shouting.

"So, that was it, really," he says quickly, standing up and looking sidelong at the door. "Shelly just wanted me to say goodbye for her."

Strangely, it's Tokitoh blue eyes that focus on him, suddenly very wide and surprised looking. "Wait, you're going with her and stuff, right?"

"Of course."

"Okay," Tokitoh says quickly, and then looks at Kubota who still has his hands, and then back at Goku. "But... is that- I mean, you'll come back, won't you?"

"I don't think Shelly's getting back into Japan anytime soon," Goku says, and tries not to wonder why Tokitoh suddenly cares.

"That's lame," Tokitoh mutters, lips twisted in disgust. "She didn't even do anything. Just almost got killed."

Goku shrugs and nods his agreement. It's pretty lame that they all met like this in the first place and nothing's going to happen. Lame, but better. Better than drifting through the rain and hearing an imaginary Sanzo yelling on his shoulder. Better to watch Kubota's hands intertwined with someone else's then see the combination of calm and empty rage that made Goku so mad and sick and exhausted to witness.

Kubota walks him to the door. On the threshold he leans a little too close and murmurs, "Maybe it means that she and Tokitoh have until the next life to learn to get along?"

There's a spark of placid mischief in his expression and the reflected light makes Kubota's eyes almost green.

"Hey," Goku whispers back. "I promise to get along with you too, if you promise to live to ripe old age."

Kubota outright grins and bows his head. "I'll think about it."

The door closes firmly and Goku doesn't look back once on the way to the hospital.

He does see Kubota, one more time about a week later. Sneaking down a dimly lit hospital corridor, in the suprisingly quiet way he can. Out of Shelly's room.

Goku thinks about stopping him, saying something, but doesn't.

It's dark in the apartment after Goku leaves, once Tokitoh turn off his video game. No point playing anyway, when you keep losing like that.

"So... you know, you don't have to help me with this, you know," Tokitoh mutters suddenly, staring off toward the window. "I mean... she didn't even do anything! And they shot her like that. She could have died."

"Hai, that's true," Kubota agrees placidly, as he settles down on the couch next to Tokitoh, letting his feet rest on Tokitoh's knees. "And you don't have to stay here. You could leave the country and then there probably wouldn't be anyone who wants to shoot you."

"They shot at you too. Just because they didn't hit you," Tokitoh continues obliviously. "I mean... they shot at you."

"Yes. That's going to happen."

"So, you don't have to help me. Just because I can't remember anything like an idiot, or whatever. You can just... I mean, I'm not sick anymore, I can live on my own."

Kubota smiles and presses the sole of his foot against Tokitoh's knee. "But, who will cook curry for you then?"

"Fuck off about the curry! I'm serious!"

"I understand. So am I."

Tokitoh seizes Kubota's hand, hard and sudden. "I don't want you to die."

"I'm not dead."

"I know that! Jeez! I've seen zombie movies and you don't look anything like that."

Kubota laughs. "You could leave the country, though. Seriously." You could, Tokitoh hears. You could.

"Fuck, Kubo-chan! Don't even say stupid shit like that," he hisses and lets the tips of claws dig into Kubota's flesh. Warm beads of blood stain the fingertips of his glove.

"So you'll stay here. And we'll keep looking for your answers." Kubota runs a single, stained finger over Tokitoh's lower lip. "If that's okay with you, of course."

"Don't say stupid shit like that," Tokitoh mumbles around the edge of that finger.

When their plane lands at JFK it's raining. Shelly has her nose pressed to the thick glass of the window and Goku is eating the last of her peanuts.

"It's nice," she said suddenly, as if they'd been in the middle of a long conversation.

"Nice?"

"Spring rain. You know, I always liked the rain."

Goku stares at the back of her neck, the relaxed lines of her spine, which are probably half painkiller induced anyway. He smiles.

"No. I didn't know. But I'm glad."

The End

OMAKE

(Or, what happened to the porn? Why is there no porn?)

Tokitoh and Kubota, shower scene:

"Hey, can you see anything?" Shelly asks as she leans forward, squinting into the bathroom. She pops a kernel of popcorn into her mouth and chews.

"No, too much steam," Goku says and tilts his popcorn bag back so it funnels directly into his mouth. "Buthmushmearmum."

"Idiot." Shelly smacks him over the head with her mostly full bag without taking her eyes off the steamfilled shower door.

"I mean, I think I hear something."

"Hear this voyeur scum!" A dark head peers over the shower door holding up a single, clawed middle finger. "You perverts better find something else to do, or the mighty, and also amazingly gorgeous, Tokitoh will-"

A hand closes on his shoulder and pulls him back into the shower.

"You know," Kubota's mild voice is pitched to be just heard over the shower. "I'm not sure about perverts, but they should known that my gun is waterproof."

Shelly just shrugs and doesn't blink when Goku grabs the remains of her popcorn. "Yeah, yeah. This is the worst sex show ever. I'm going to buy cigarettes."

After he's finished the popcorn Goku frowns and leans back toward the shower. "Hey, is it really? Which gun is that?"

The End

Shelly and Tokitoh, (don't ask about the set-up. Just say no to questions about the set up):

Shelly pulled her shirt off and Tokitoh's jaw hit the floor. It was like... like hentai. Bouncier than hentai.

"What the fuck are you staring at?"

"How did they get so... so big? Did you have to install mouths to feed them or something?"

he asked, in utter, eyepopping fascination.

"What? What?"

"I'm serious! Are you the girl they get to do all the porn? You look just like this girl in this magazine that-" Tokitoh never even saw the fist before it connected with his jaw.

The End

Goku and Kubota:

K: "Hmmm... well this is interesting."

G: "No, it isn't."

T: "Hey! Hey! What are you two doing in there?"

G: "Hey, is that Tokitoh?"

K: "Well, it might just be a really, really angry cat, but do you want to take your chances?"

G: "Um. No?"

K: "Always nice to see you, Goku." pause "Hmm... he forgot his pants."

The End

Shelly and Kubota:

S: "This is great and all, but there are IVs in most of my veins."

K: "Hmmm... good point. Maybe we should have tried this earlier?"

T: "Hey, hey! I hear you two in there!"

S: "You brought a cat to the hospital? Not very sanitary, Kubota-san."

K: "I suppose not."

T: "I can still hear every. damn. word."

K: "Hmm... I suppose I should go."

T: "I'm coming in, in about two seconds! And you'd better not be doing anything perverted."

S: "Yeah, sure, leave a lady hanging. I'm disappointed."

K: "Well, that makes two of us."

T: "It had better not!"

The End

Goku and Tokitoh:

Take One

Tokitoh knocked on Goku's door, with sharp, vicious pounding sounds. When Goku opened it he blinked at the sight of a completely soaked Tokitoh, hair plastered to his skull and skimpy tee shirt almost translucent.

"Hello," Goku murmured, adjusting his faux velvet pajamas. "What can I do for you?" Somewhere in the background the crooning tones of Teddy Pendergrass floated in.

Tokitoh caught his breath, just staring at Goku. He opened his mouth. Shut it. Opened it again. Turned and glared off to the side somewhere.

"Oi! Line?"

Take Two

Tokitoh knocked on Goku's door, with sharp, vicious pounding sounds. When Goku opened it he blinked at the sight of a completely soaked Tokitoh, hair plastered to his skull and skimpy tee shirt almost translucent.

"Hello," Goku murmured, adjusting his faux velvet pajamas. He stared down at his script and frowned, reading the words off syllable by syllable. "Um. What can I do for a pretty kitty like you?" Somewhere in the background the crooning tones of Teddy Pendergrass floated in.

Tokitoh blinked, stared at his script and then at Goku. It took him almost an entire second to slam his fist in Goku's nose and throw the script after him, before slamming the door between them shut.

"OOOOIII! Line?"

The End in the interest of the writer's survival


End file.
